Debate and Who Wins and Who Loses

Ever since the Age of Reason, or even back to when Abelard faced Bernard at the Sorbonne, there has been the notion that the Winner of a debate would be he who had the most Reasonable Argument. Reason was supposed to win. Arguments were all about Reason.

That is what they said.

But all of the People saying such a thing were all being a bit disingenuous because, really, they all knew enough of Ancient Greek Literature and History to know that there has always been more than Reason involved in all such things. We knew about Sophists and Demagogues – people who made it their specialty to convince with Reason, or without it, to persuade according to the Interests of the Moment, appealing as much to prevalent tastes, likes and dislikes, and popular prejudices as to Reason.

Today we recognize them as lawyers, advertisers, politicians and Debaters.

Now, what they all have in common is that they are very results-oriented. Its all about Winning or Selling.

What if you only wanted to be reasonable?

You know, the thing about Reason is that it is self-evident. One knows how one does in a debate. And one knows whether the other guy has been reasonable or not. Now, sometimes it occurs that two people can be reasonable. It happens. One person has one set of facts that support one view of the Universe, while another person has another set of facts that present another view… a competing perspective of the Universe. In such a situation, well, both debaters have an opportunity to learn… to expand there view. Most importantly, there is not really a need for hostility or animosity.

I visited one Debate Page recently where I was told that I was lucky that another much better Debater rarely came to the Page as he would likely make my life miserable if he did. This made me wonder whether he was being spoken of in such a way because he was a particularly Reasonable or a particularly Obnoxious Debater.

Many people on the fringes of the Debate World suppose that animosity and hostility are intrinsic to the Debate. For them I suppose it is. It is like people going to Auto Races to see the crashes. But Auto Racing is not about crashing… yes, crashing is a mistake that often happens and it attracts much of the attention. But Racing is mostly about driving very fast. Likewise, Debates are about Reason, and thinking Fast. Its not really about ‘crashing’ and all the animosities that some people think are so essential.


I’ve been debating for years. My best debates have been rather cordial. Reasonable people discussing an issue.

How does hostility ever get involved anyway?

Oh, there is the matter of Group Dynamics and of certain personality types using Hostility and Aggression to maneuver for Group Alpha Status – Roaring, Foot Stomping and Chest Beating. You know, as much as we would wish to be able to universally ridicule such unreasonable behaviors, still, for many people such Dominance Behaviors carry more weight than a subtly expressed thread of logic. And, really, we must realize that it is very possibly much more likely that most people better understand Aggression and Dominance than they understand the intricacies of Reason.

It reminds me of a Story. A Village in India was being lead into Rebellion by some big ruffian who pretended to quote the Vedas, in support of all his outrages. A Vedic Scholar from the Provincial Capital thought that it would be easy enough to go to the Village and challenge the man. When he got there he discovered that the Fake Scholar held his Vedic Scroll upside-down. He thought it was quite decisive when he pointed this fact out to the Crowd, that they would immediately reject the phony, if it was so obvious that the man could not possibly really know how to read. However, it was not to prove quite so easy. You see, the People themselves also did not know how to read, and did not realize that it was such an important matter of whether a book was right-side up or not. So the Big Dumb Rebel just laughed and roared out to People that for anybody who can ‘really read’ it doesn’t matter which way a book happens to be. And for most of the people this made perfect sense. Guess who they believed?

The Scholar for the City lost. But he wasn’t wrong. Sometimes we just have to settle for not being wrong…. And then send in the Troops.