great debates

Even though I disapproved of arbitrarily choosing a side, I did go in for debate, but I think my poor behavior got my kicked off of Debate Club, the En-Gager too I think. Mrs Kew, not a fan of Ken. But of course there are debate club rules, which exist only in academia, I don’t think there are any professional debate leagues.

And then there are real debates, the only ones I can think of being political debates. I don’t know about them. On the one hand it’s the only time the candidate faces any opposition. There are a few hardball interviewers who will ask hard questions but damn few. And I guess it shows you a little about how the guy can think on his feet.

On the other hand these things are all rehearsed and maybe the winner had better handlers, and just because a guy is a good debater doesn’t necessarily mean he would be a good president. And these guys with the silver tongues are a little suspect because of their power to cloud men’s minds.

I’m going to differ with you on facts and opinions. I don’t think they are the same thing. That the magna carta was signed in 1215 is a fact. That it brought liberty to the folk of England and was a harbinger of democracy to come is an opinion. In the strictest sense we can’t really know anything for absolutely sure, and we usually have to depend on some other source than our own senses for our facts. But not all sources are equal. If I say I read in the Encyclopedia Britannica that the date was 1215, that outweighs somebody who says the guy on the next bar stool, or worse yet, some blogger, told him it was 1214. I think for discussion purposes certain sources can be accepted as factworthy, witness the fact that we generally accept wiki.

I am a stickler on facts. If I think a fact is not true I have to stop everything and examine that. That’s because opinions are based on facts and if the facts are untrue you can come up with any opinion. Opinions are just theories, like science, you gather together some facts and think of a general theory that would fit them. As such, if your opinion is questioned, you can’t just shrug, you have to present your facts.

Thankfully I have never had to sell a truck. I hate that haggling over a price. I guess some people, like you mentioned just do it for fun, and I just can’t imagine.

Does it ever seem frustrating to you that we can’t change each other’s minds about anything? If two reasonable guys like ourselves, who have no particular irons in any fire, can’t come to an agreement what chance is their in the world?

I do think we come to an understanding of how the other guy thinks. And I think there is something in having a discussion which doesn’t get into that name calling that you see so often on the internet makes one feel a little better about humanity. And just because you have to frame your own arguments to make them, it helps hone your reasoning.

Just between you and me, do you ever come up with an argument and then after you’ve written it down, realize that it’s not really true, but then you think the other guy will never notice that and so you leave it in? Me neither, I never do that.

I have been using the term argument in the last two paragraphs when I really should have been using a term like discussion points, just being lazy.

This no pants thing is a little more than I needed to know. I have to assume that you are sitting at a table or something across from your computer.