What is debate?

Cutting and pasting a supporting page may help (or hurt!) your position in a debate by lending some authority to the discussion so it isn't always a bad thing.

Keep in mind that everyone isn't here to debate. Some people post stories from papers to generate discussion or promote their interests/views. That is just as valid use of the forums as debate is but with another intended purpose.

You can have a good time without debating.

I do try to make my postings substantive, and post only when I have something to say. What you get in my posts is my opinion, and my analysis. My experience is that the news media often gets it wrong, misstates facts, and is rarely unbiased. Even worse are the solemn pronouncements of the commentariat.

I like to take my "facts" from as near the original source as possible, and regard them as suspect until they are confirmed by multiple independent sources. Incredible conclusions demand an incredible level of proof. Anything that smacks of exaggeration, or emotional fervor are discounted. The privately expressed opinions of friends who are in a position to know things are generally more credible to me than the headlines. I ask myself what the informant's motives and biases are, and weight the data accordingly. Once a data set is in place, I try to make sense of it using analytical techniques that have proven themselves after decades of use.

Analysis isn't always quantitative, especially when human emotions are involved. Often we are forced to rely upon experience and art, but then the conclusions are softer and confidence levels decrease. It is sooo easy for one's own personal biases to enter into the analysis, that I try to counter by giving conflicting points of view more emphasis and consideration.

Partisanship always tends to demonize the other party. Bush is evil incarnate and though an idiot he has a fiendishly clever plot to impose a religious dictatorship. Sure. Clinton is a playboy puppet for his communist wife and the two of them are responsible for the moral decline in America. Sure. These same sort of wild accusations have been hurled back and forth since Washington assumed office. Zealots at the opposite corners of the political arena are just a fact of life we have to live with. Thankfully, most of this country's people are very middle of the road.

Asherman - A breath of fresh air as always!

What is debate? That's simple!

It's what you use to catch defish!

"Useful Debate" may be an oxymoron. The cut and pasters and the self-proclaimed expert analysts seem to take over just about every forum.
What is needed, trespass, is not debate as much as discussion. I don't claim to be so smart that I can write long essays decreeing what is "right" and who is "wrong" on any issue.
While I have been around awhile, have been a few places and done some things, I don't pretend to know all of the answers. In fact, there are some problems facing us that I find deeply perplexing, and I am uncertain what the solutions might be.
"Debate" seems to end up with "I can talk louder than you."
"Discussion," when it occurs, concludes with "What do you think?"

Johnboy,

I believe that your preference of calling what we do here "discussion" rather than "debate", is right on the money.

How good an analysis is can only be determined after the fact. If projections come to pass, then the analysis was either pretty good, or pretty lucky. Until actual results are in, projections and predictions only exist as probabilities. Each of us should assess for ourselves the probabilities of various alternative futures. We tend to regard those who support our own conclusions as more "expert" than those who do not. Generally, I tend to trust informed specialists with technical backgrounds within the area of their analysis more than the opinions of newspaper, or televsion reporters. Obviously, not everyone agrees with that approach.

Hmmm - I like the distinction that is being drawn between discussion and debate.

Debate seems to me to be something of an intellectual exercise where one takes sides - sometimes arbitrarily, as in a formal debate - and does one's best to defend one's position.

As an academic exercise, or as an amusement, this is, in my view, a worthy and stimulating endeavour - and I can take much from a debate...including intellectual pleasure and a changed point of view - generally in the long term, as I cool off from the heat of battle.

A discussion is, I think, a less ritualized creature - less a gladiatorial contest than a meeting of minds - where the aim is to arrive at a position of joint rest - whether this be a consensus, or a decison to disagree.

Both have their place, I suggest, but they occupy different spaces.

I am notorious for my cut and paste response.
Sometimes I used to avoid and here is the one I try.
People are posting their moral/ethical/emotional/political views by selecting a suitable article couched in a better language..

What is wrong in it?
Is UnAble2Know is so tired like Abuzz or any xyz forum?
I assure you that i will type without cut and paste in your language( though faulty)

Don't debate with me but discuss.
my view is this.
American Democracy is faulty.
Faulty because the only party out of Office/White house
knows how to run the government and ruin not the globe.

Edgar Allan poe had opined
" Poetry is the rhythemical creation of beauty in words."
Poverty is the systematical creation of barbaric modern world--Rama

Ignorance has its virtues;
without it there would be mighty little
conversation/debate/discussion/argument

"Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" - T. S. Eliot