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April 11, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
17:10
1327 Debating Tips

Some thoughts on my recent debates...

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well.
This is just an annoying bit of advice.
I'll try and keep it short. Just for the people who have emailed me feverishly seeking to jump in the ring for a debate, I just wanted to point out some things that I have...
Let's say gathered together from doing these debates for a couple of years now in the libertarian or anarchist community and having been a debater for almost a quarter century now, I wanted to point out some things that I think will be helpful for you so that we have a higher quality of debates.
I really want to make sure that we get further along in our mutual exploration of truth.
So the first thing that I think is important is Maybe I'm old school this way, but if you're going to debate me, I think it's really important to, dare I say it, prepare.
And what I mean by that is that get your facts straight, right?
So if you think that you understand an argument that I'm making, give me the references, right?
The books are all free. They're PDF. You can search them.
You can search the podcast titles and descriptions.
There's introduction to philosophy videos.
There's posts on the board.
The books are all searchable on the FDR boards as well.
So it's not that hard to find out where it is that I've said something so that you can quote it back to me and say, well, how does this fit with that or whatever, right?
I'll have my copy ready of the books too so that we can have a look at it together and you can help me correct any mistakes.
But just to go on, you know, hearsay or someone said or it seems to me or it appears that you believe this or the, you know, that's just blah, blah, blah.
It's nonsense, right? I mean, you need to do better than that, obviously, not just with me, but with any kind of intellectual pursuit.
So be prepared. I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I have been debating for about 25 years, maybe a little under.
And the first year that I was a debater, I went to the Canadian finals and came in sixth.
In the very first year, I stepped up to do it within a few months of starting.
So I have, you know, Baldy's got some game is kind of what I'm trying to tell you.
I have some game. I've been studying philosophy for a quarter century.
I have presented at conferences all over the world.
I have presented a New Hampshire conference.
I have done sales, entrepreneurial, executive stuff, which is all about debating and negotiating.
So I have, and I also run the largest and most successful philosophy conversation the world has ever seen, not because I'm so bright, but because the technology is so amazing and maybe some brightness.
But just remember, I mean, I'm kind of a heavyweight when it comes to debating and philosophy.
It certainly doesn't mean that I'm always right, but it does mean that I'm kind of a heavyweight.
And if you want to step into the ring, it might behoove you to do some preparation and some training rather than just sort of wade in, casting stuff randomly.
You don't want to look like the outtakes from American Idol, where people come in and just bleat and squeal their way into stone-faced embarrassment.
I don't think you want to do that, so I strongly suggest that if you're going to take on theories that I put forward or whatever, Take 20 minutes, take half an hour, look up the references, have them ready, so that you don't stumble about and get confused and rely on hearsay and have to jump back on prior positions and all that.
It really is respectful to me, it is respectful most of all to yourself, but really it's respectful to the time and energy of the listeners to be prepared with what it is you want to talk about.
Now, if you want an example of that, I mean, when I wanted to take on a heavyweight, i.e.
Monsieur LeSocrates, what I did was, you know, I did the research, I did the studying, I've read just about everything that Plato has that has Socrates in it, and I dove into the trial and death of Socrates reading virtually the whole trial, pointing out things along the way with reference to history.
You need to do your preparation and do your research if you're going to take on a heavy weight.
And if you're not going to take on a heavy weight, I wouldn't bother.
It's important to debate with the best so that you learn the most.
So when I write critiques of Jung or of Freud or whatever, I mean, I've really dug in and studied this stuff for many years, read biographies, and I know, I mean, it doesn't mean that I'm right.
It certainly doesn't mean that I'm perfect, but the important thing is to do the preparation.
It's not like Mike Tyson looking down as some Boy Scout pokes at his knee, thinking that this is some sort of equal fight.
It's really just around preparation, because certainly the people I've debated with are easily intelligent and erudite enough to do a great job.
But the lack of preparation is sort of baffling to me.
It indicates that you think you're just so smart that you don't need to prepare or study or have any kind of accuracy.
And, you know, I submit that's just kind of lazy, right?
I mean, you have to get into the skin of the people that you're debating.
You've heard me probably argue the devil's advocate position as a priest, as a relativist, as a pro-social contract dude.
You have to get into an inhabit.
The arguments that you're going to be deconstructing, you have to be very precise, you have to be, you have to have your quotes, you have to be ready, so that you can make the case effectively, rather than it just being a bunch of hearsay nonsense made up defenses and opinions, which is really not, it's not, it's not right.
Don't waste people's time. And there's kind of a vanity, right?
I mean, if I think that I'm such a great fighter that I can jump in the ring with Mike Tyson and I don't need to train or warm up or even get out of my work clothes, you know, I'm kind of riding for a fall.
And you might want to examine the psychological mechanisms behind that.
It probably would be quite fruitful for you to do that.
But that would be my suggestion.
And of course, if you feel, and maybe you're right, maybe you have a galaxy-spanning intellect that dwarfs mine and everyone else's, and you don't need to do any preparation or research in order to debate someone about ethics or whatever.
You can just come in with your own opinions and blow them away with whatever magic pixie duster you have in your back pocket.
But if you are, you know, such a brain-spanning genius that you don't need to prepare or even get quotes accurate from people or know what rights are or whatever, then you really should not debate me, but you should do your own philosophy show and blow us all out of the water, right? Everybody who's attempting to talk about reason and evidence using this medium or any medium for that matter.
So I think you might want to, you know, those who I've debated or those who want to debate, you just might want to reconsider what you're really in it for because no preparation shows up continually.
No preparation wading in with hearsay, without facts, without quotes.
You know, when I say, well, where did I say this?
And people are like, well, it just seems to be the case that it's like everybody knows that's just a bunch of bullshit, right?
So it's clear.
It's all over your face.
It's evident. You know, do the right thing.
And if you have put something forward, you say, well, Steph, you say this.
And I say, well, I don't remember saying that.
Where did I say that? And you say, well, you know what?
I don't know. So let me withdraw that and I will go somewhere else.
But if you just kind of blindly push on and say, well, a little birdie told me or I read it in the sky or Zeus traced it on my forehead...
Like everybody knows, it's kind of nonsense, right?
And it's kind of embarrassing.
You want to up your intellectual integrity quotient to debate, right?
I'm not saying I'm always perfect, but these are the standards that I try to aim for.
Now, the third thing that I'd like to mention is really around this question of integrity.
I think, and this is no proof of anything, but I'm just being upfront about how it is that I approach stuff.
You can like it or not like it as you see fit, but I think it's important to know.
Which is that when I debate with someone about ethics in particular, I'm not particularly impressed by what people say.
What I am impressed by is their physical commitment and manifestation Of ethics.
That's really what I'm interested in when I debate someone.
So, for instance, we would all, I think, everybody who's interested in ethics, who's not a complete nihilist, in other words, nuts, would say honesty is a virtue, right?
So if I'm debating with you and you're trying to lecture to me about ethics and this and that, And that's fine.
I lecture to people about ethics too, so it's not a pejorative.
But if you're lecturing me about ethics, what I'm going to do is I'm not really going to listen to what you say.
I'm going to look at what you do to see if you understand things like integrity, honesty, ethics, virtue, courage, and so on.
Because if you weasel, if you prevaricate, if you change the topic, if you just keep plowing on even when you're wrong, if you resort to the, quote, devil's advocate position or whatever, then what I'm going to see is that you don't have a very high level, in fact, I would say a very low or negative level of integrity when it comes to debating.
And again, this is not to say that I'm always perfect, but these are the standards that I aim for.
And when I make mistakes, I try to say, hey, look, you know, I went too far here, but here's why I did it, and you can let me know if it makes sense or whatever.
And I have lots of retractions in my podcast when I've made errors in Facts for Logic.
So when someone wants to debate me about ethics, you know that old saying, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing?
What I'm going to look for is ethical actions, ethical behavior.
Not a bunch of windy ethical abstractions.
Now, if you act with honor, honesty, and integrity, and that doesn't mean that you've got to be sensitive to my feelings or anything, but if you admit when you're wrong, if you withdraw, when you make an assertion that you can't back up about something I or anyone has said, do you withdraw that and kind of ideally apologize?
If you, say, use the term like X, Y, and Z, and then I ask you to define it, you don't really know what it is, then you should say, well, I should really stop this debate, or at least let's move on from that topic, because I don't have as clear an understanding as I thought I did about that.
I look for that kind of honesty and integrity in someone who debates.
Now, if you don't show that honesty and integrity, but you're talking a lot about ethics...
Then you just strike me as a fat guy trying to sell me a diet book saying, you know, being thin is the best thing ever.
Well, I can't hear your diet book over how overweight you are.
And so I can't hear you talk about ethics when I can't see you acting with basic honesty and integrity in a debate.
That's just my approach because anyone can say anything, but the people who really understand stuff, the people who really understand ethics are the people who have struggled And it can be really tough and really humiliating, and it's tough for me even now, right? The people who have struggled to implement ethics in their lives, to be honest, to admit when they're wrong, to back down when disproven, to apologize when mistakes are made.
The act of living ethics will teach you It's infinitely more about ethics than reading a book or having a debate.
You need to kind of put the rubber on the road, right?
There's only so many books about car driving that you can read before you actually have to get behind the wheel.
And it's not like the reading is bad, but without, you know, if you just watch kung fu films but never get into the ring and spar, then...
You don't really know Kung Fu.
You just read about it or maybe watch it a bit, but you haven't actually really done it and all of the challenges.
The people who know are the people who've done it, not the people who talk about it or write about it or blog about it or article about it or whatever.
That's just talk, right? That's just like the free market academics who hide in state protected or religious universities and talk about the value of the free market while collecting state protected unionized pensions and paychecks and tenure.
If you really love the free market, then join me out here in the Wild West.
Give away the valuable lessons that you have and charge or ask for donations.
That's a way to live the values of the free market.
They say, well, free market produces quality, but I'm going to hide out in a state-protected monopoly.
I can't hear what they're saying or what they're actually doing.
And of course, free market economists ask everyone else to give up their state-protected privilege while clinging desperately, I might add, to their own.
So it's important to really look, for me, what I do is I look at how somebody is behaving and I get their understanding of ethics from what they're doing rather than what they're saying.
So that's so important.
That's so important. If you want to gain credibility, not with me, who cares, right?
But if you want to gain credibility with people, you need to be able to admit when you're wrong.
You need to be able to back down from an untenable position.
And you need to not be...
I don't know how to put it exactly.
You need to not be glib and insulting to people, right?
I mean, as I say at the very beginning of UPB, to take an example, maybe I've completely failed, right?
It's held up to me beautifully and with some real swing so far.
But don't be glib.
You know, we all hate it when people just eerily dismiss the free market as an institution of monopolization and corruption or eerily dismiss people like Rand or Rothbard or whatever without really knowing and understanding.
We know how annoying that is, right?
And it's no less annoying, you know, on the inside, right?
So... Someone, I think it was, and I'm not even going to go with the hearsay, but someone said, oh, UPB is disproven because you can use UPB to prove the universal proposition that everyone should do whatever they want all the time.
And then people think, ah, I have snapped my fingers and shazam, UPB is gone.
And that's just kind of airy and it's not really insulting to me because I just realized that it's a ridiculous position to hold but it's kind of insulting because you know just to yourself right and to the value of rational and critical thought to just dismiss things based on prejudice right.
The short answer, of course, is that UPB completely denies the viability and logical consistency of the proposition that everyone should do whatever they want all the time.
And that's a universal.
And I give examples.
You know, you can use the same examples that I use in the book.
Two people in a room.
One man, one woman.
The man wants to rape the woman.
The woman does not want to be raped.
How is it that you can universally apply the rule that they both get to do whatever they want all the time?
Because the man wants to rape her.
She doesn't want to get raped.
You immediately have a contradiction which can't be resolved according to the rule, therefore it's not universal, therefore it is denied by UPB. So, you know, you just need to not glibly dismiss stuff, but dig in and think about stuff.
Like, I didn't take on certain aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy until I'd read objectivist stuff up and down the yin-yang for like decades.
And I'm not saying it's going to take decades, but think into a thinker.
Understand where that thinker is coming from.
Try arguing the pro position when you're actually conned.
That is an excellent, excellent device.
And lawyers do that all the time, right?
They role play the opposing counsel.
You need to up your game if you want to change the world.
You need to up your game.
You need to be prepared. You need to look at things from the other side.
You need to be critical of your own prejudices and biases.
And we all do. I'm just trying to remind you of that so that when you do get into a debate, you can actually do something other than stumble around and look, you know, not that bright, which is a real shame because I know that the people I've debated are very bright, but it's really all about the preparation.
You've got to let go of the vanity, the airy dismissal of stuff.
You've got to really, if you want to take on a thinker, I mean, I got a graduate degree in this stuff.
I got an A in objective, rational, empirical philosophy from the king of relativity universities, University of Toronto.
If you think that's easy, I wouldn't suggest you try it.
It's really not, right?
So you really have to discipline yourself to not just wave a magic wand and just dismiss certain people's thinking or ways of thinking.
You need to get into the other person's shoes.
You need to be prepared.
You need to have some quotes.
You need to get your facts straight.
You need to have people roleplay.
The other side, so that you can actually be prepared, right?
If you're going to step into the ring with a heavyweight, and I'm not saying I'm the heavyweight, but I'm a heavyweight for sure.
If you want to step into the ring with a heavyweight, you know, at least do some warm-ups, because otherwise it's...
It's just an embarrassing cream corn festival, and I'm certainly done with that.
So if you want to debate me, give me the quotes ahead of time.
Give me your recent arguments.
I'm not just going to wade in because I've got enough of an evidence that we who claim to want to reverse the polarity of social thinking seem to be too lazy to do some elemental basic research and preparation, which means you don't really want to change the world.
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