Why I Insist on Written Debates

If you ever wondered why I no longer do video debates, this is precisely why.

Viewer 1: JD won the debate. I remember watching it. Vox had a formidable opponent and made sure his arguments were well delineated. JD breezed by all of it, and Vox knew it. So what?

Viewer 2: No, he never understood it. If he had, he would have addressed it. Instead, he assiduously avoided it.

Viewer 3: Having read the transcript, I do not see anything which would be described as a technical rebuttal to Vox’s technical points. Just blanket dismissal and repeated references to large numbers.

Viewer 1: Did you watch the debate, live, as I did? The transcript does not show the context between two human beings in debate.

No, what the transcript lacks is not the “context”, but rather, the irrelevant rhetorical posturing. And this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. It’s not just morons interested in evolution who respond to rhetoric and posturing in lieu of facts and reason; we saw exactly the same reaction in morons who favor free trade in the Murphy-Day debate as well as by the alt-retards in the Anglin-Day debate.

In all three cases, neither Gariepy nor Murphy nor Anglin ever even BEGAN to address the primary issue of substance that had been raised. It wasn’t merely three cases of unsuccessful refutations as none of them even tried to refute the core argument that had been presented to them. It was quite clear to me that of the three, only Anglin actually understood what I was saying; he simply elected to punt rather than to engage on an issue he knew he was going to lose. That being said, by virtue of their rhetorical posturing, they managed to convince at least some of the viewers who understood even less of the issues at hand than they did that their erroneous positions were correct.

JFG, for example, never even grasped that he had accomplished nothing more than falling directly into the dilemma which I explicitly laid out for him at the start. He merely chose, on the basis of literally nothing but handwaving and an ontological argument, to disqualify the hammer, and completely failed to realize that in doing so, he had fallen victim to the anvil.

I pointed this out, of course, but JFG was “too tired” to follow my explanation, and there is reason to believe that he could not have managed it even if he’d tried. After all, it took me three attempts to explain the concept of a “mathematical average” to him before he was able to grasp it.

This is why I now insist on written debates, because the written format eliminates the ability of the charlatan to posture his way through a debate in which he is over his head, and permits the audience to review and re-review the material until they fully understand what both sides are saying. And this is probably why I engage in considerably fewer debates these days, because the charlatans are terrified of risking the methodical exposure of their ignorance.

DISCUSS ON SG