GhostAnime
Searching for her...
Edit by Profesco: Leave this open and in Misc until further notice, please.
Before I begin, I'd just like to let the mods know that this isn't exactly a topic to spark debate. In fact, feel free to lock it up right after this post. This is something meant to be read; not to be responded to. As long as the veteran members get at least one look at any paragraph in this post, nothing else matters to me.
The purpose of this post is to clarify something from me and others that I know in the debate forum. I notice things and get a sense of judgment from people in other areas of the forum about us and what we've been doing for years over in the debate section. Many people get a misguided sense on what debating actually is and why people do it so much.
Some people don't like debates because people rarely change their minds in them. This is especially true for politics and religion. Most people who are willing to participate in debating sensitive topics most likely have already made-up their mind by the time they're intelligent enough to carry themselves professionally in intellectual exchange. In other cases, they are so personally affected by an issue that simply because someone has contradictory information means nothing to what they've personally experienced.
Some don't like debating because of their pacifist nature. They don't want people to insult or hate each other midway or after the debate. They want everyone to get along and be friends. They see debates as nothing more than a match waiting to be lit by one spark which will soon burn the entire house down. These people strive for peace and harmony more than anything else.
Lastly, some people don't like debates because they just don't care. They don't care who thinks what or what's true. They just want to live their life with their viewpoints and be done with it all. They feel the effort debaters put into debating is not worth getting into and would prefer to live life in a more carefree fashion. Do what you want wherever you want; just don't tell me about it. They usually see debaters as nothing more than egotists who want to prove somebody wrong.
But I personally believe all of these are misconceived ideas on why I debate and why I feel others debate with me.
All debates are in vain because nobody changes their mind.
It's true. Many people don't leave a debate with an entirely new opinion. Many debates are indeed emotionally charged; however, why do these conditions make all debates in vain? The purpose to debate was never about changing somebody's viewpoints. In fact, it should almost never be about changing someone's opinion. One of the most important purposes of debating your views is for you yourself to see how firmly you truly do believe in your philosophy.
Debates are like scientific experiments in the fact that they have the power to test how solid or reasonable an opinion is. You will never truly know how reasonable or solid your philosophy is unless you argue about it with many people. The more you argue about it, the more holes you will see, and the more adjustments you will need to make. Depending on these holes, you will either reject the philosophy all together or simply modify your viewpoint. If there are little to no holes, then more than likely it is a very solid idea you can carry around.
You still must constantly test your philosophy. There is never a time you should stop. New information is gathered, new holes are found, and new opinions and viewpoints come into play. This is why debating is healthy for any individual who wants to discover the truth. The truth can only be found when one is finally standing above all through the rigorous tests of intellectual exchange. So, as you can see, it's not truly important whether you changed someone's mind. It's the simple fact that you communicated in such a professional way that they have to respect not only your viewpoint, but the holes in their own. I will talk more about this later on.
But debates could turn into flame wars / I hate arguments. I want to see people compromising and not fighting each other.
What about the pacifists? Even if people learn something new, what if one of these things included grudges and disdain for the opposing side? Even in intellectual exchanges, people hold hidden biases and grudges. It's human nature and there is truly nothing we can do about it.
And that is exactly why I feel like the pacifist viewpoint isn't worth having when it comes to debates.
Humans have different experiences, and it is foolish to believe that these different experiences aren't different enough to say that human clashing isn't inevitable. These experiences need to be known. It is much worse to not allow arguments and debates for the simple fact that someone may be hurt. It is in fact possible that a hurt person may need to be heard; otherwise, they, and many others, will remain hurt.
Imagine a world without debate. A world that had nothing but agreements. This world would be ripe for the most extreme conformity ever conceived. Want to know what kind of world that was? It was the world Galileo lived in.
Everyone knows about Galileo's time. If you don't, I'll give you a quick overview. Galileo was the scientist who invented the telescope. He discovered many new things about the universe that were absolutely crazy at the time. The most controversial theory he pointed out was heliocentrism, or the idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the Sun revolving around the Earth. It was an idea that didn't originate by Galileo, but his discoveries made the idea worth debating against what the church knew at the time. Want to know what the church did?
He was persecuted. He wasn't the only scientist who was physically threatened, either. Many scientists of the past were threatened and dissuaded from publishing and offering new theories on the physical world. Some historians today will tell you that if it weren't for centuries of persecuting great minds, we would live in a much more advanced world today for the simple fact that accepting facts at the time of discovery leads to accepting even more facts later on. It as if the church and people at the time were handicapping themselves for the sake of conformity and agreement.
And I, unfortunately, see extreme pacifists the same way. When you discourage debate for the sake of agreement, you are only encouraging conformity, stagnation, and the status-quo. The world and the humans that live in it are forever changing and growing every day. New ideas and ways of thinking must always present themselves, otherwise, who would think they were wrong if no one brought up disagreements? It took debates to realize the validity of science that we take granted for today. It took debates to realize that colored people were the same as white people. Everything we take for granted today was because someone went out and constantly debated with people. Debating
brings progress; peace and harmony brings conformity and stagnation.
So is it worth the effort?
I personally think so. Debating is as much as finding your self-identity as it is progressing mankind, and it doesn't stop there. When you are debating, you are not only putting your ideas out for examination and examining ideas others put out, but you are also learning more about the world and some parts of yourself you may not have ever known. When two people come together with differing viewpoints to then share how they feel on the topics, they are exchanging their unique experience. This gives you a chance to understand something you may absolutely have no idea about it. "Victory" in debate isn't settled by winning/losing or changing someone's mind. That is such a black-and-white interpretation. The true "victory" in a sincere debate is when you leave with understanding and acknowledgment. You don't have to agree with someone to understand them.
Any debate can create this for you no matter how one-sided it could possibly be. For example, gay marriage. I think for the most part, that debate is one-sided. Regardless of what side you're on, any logical person would admit that gay marriage objectively is perfectly fine.
However, if you were still debating with even the most extreme fundamentalist, you can still leave with something. You can still leave with understanding. Understanding doesn't necessarily require that you dissect their logical reasoning. Understanding only requires answering the question why. Why would a person be against gay marriage? I believe all humans always have a reason for things. This reason is something they hold dear. These reasons usually involve common themes. Justice, authority, knowledge, empathy; whatever it may be, someone always has a theme behind the reason they stand for something.
So now you may be thinking what good would it do for you to learn of someone's reasoning behind a view you simply can't stand? Well, I can't say it would do much for you other than the simple fact that you just learn a new way to look at the world that may not exactly be your way.
Understanding people is one of my favorite things about debating. Yes, you won't agree with them, may never agree with them, and may not even be able to stand their presence; however, I get a good feeling out of understanding why that is. Understanding why you are different from someone, understanding what happened in our experiences to create that difference, and trying to see through their eyes is a great feeling for me. It is truly something to learn and see many vast human philosophies and experiences. My open-minded post is certainly relevant in this case. With so many different philosophies, regimens, and thoughts.. who wouldn't want to learn and feel them all? I won't even get to feel them all, but I can learn as many as I can.
So, debating can be a learning experience about the world and the different people around you. People who debate certainly open themselves to having a more open-mind than those who don't. In fact, it is a psychological fact that people who only choose to talk with those who agree with them and have similar mindsets diverge into developing extreme opinions. This is called group polarization. This is a well-known phenomenon that occurs even here. Remember all the Smogon versus Serebii arguments? Remember the huge contrast between people who played to win versus people who played to collect and for other miscellaneous reasons that didn't tie into winning a battle?
Remember when cheating and cloning were hot topics?
What essentially happens in these arguments is that there is a person who only follows and listens to viewpoints that relate to their own views. They also may surround themselves mostly of people who play like them, think like them, and always agree with them. They rally around together, and any information or opinion that heavily scrutinizes them, even if it is valid, is immediately discarded because this "group" all collectively share the same opinion. Want to know what would easily fix this? If only just one person in the entire group who self-identifies as one of them stands up and points that ******** out.
Too many people on both sides were so attached to their groups that their opinions began to go to the extreme end of pretty much assuming and insulting anyone who were simply different in mindset. Serebii users assumed Smogon were super elitists despite never meeting them, and Smogon assumed Serebii users were butthurt teenagers despite never meeting them. Replace either category with AR users, cloners, collectors, or even generation one nostalgia critics.
One person who self-identifies with them is all it takes. It gets them to think. It gets them to self-reflect when a person within the group has to challenge and debate rather than conform. As you can see, when everyone, including the people within your own mindset, debate with you, your opinions and view of the world turn that less extreme. All it takes is one person. One person can make the difference. I often dream of being that one person sometimes. Don't confuse this with having an unpopular opinion just to have one, though. It must always be with your gut and how you feel.
Conclusion
So, you see? Debating is only not pointless, but it is absolutely necessary. Ideas must be tested, progress must be sought, the truth must be found, and you must understand your own self-identity and the others around you.
But the most important thing, and I mean, the most important thing, is that you must question everything. You must dissect everything in some way. You must strive to have a viewpoint that is solid in foundation and isn't extreme. Debating seems to do all of this in one.
Galileo challenged and debated. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged and debated. Elizabeth Cady Stanton challenged and debated. Some of the greatest people and minds of history all share one thing in common: they pointed out ********. Many were tortured, threatened, and killed for simply challenging and debating ideas. To think some of you want to tell me that it takes too much effort and isn't worth it... but was it worth it for these guys?
If they were brave enough to challenge and debate ideas at the risk of their ****ing lives, how would I live with myself knowing that I had the ability to speak and debate but didn't use it?
This message isn't to recruit people to the debate forum or anything; it's merely to show everyone that people who go there to debate and enjoy participating in discussions aren't just people with egos up their asses desperately wanting to one-up a person on the Internet.
Now back to our regular misc joking, laughing, and having casual fun.
Before I begin, I'd just like to let the mods know that this isn't exactly a topic to spark debate. In fact, feel free to lock it up right after this post. This is something meant to be read; not to be responded to. As long as the veteran members get at least one look at any paragraph in this post, nothing else matters to me.
The purpose of this post is to clarify something from me and others that I know in the debate forum. I notice things and get a sense of judgment from people in other areas of the forum about us and what we've been doing for years over in the debate section. Many people get a misguided sense on what debating actually is and why people do it so much.
Some people don't like debates because people rarely change their minds in them. This is especially true for politics and religion. Most people who are willing to participate in debating sensitive topics most likely have already made-up their mind by the time they're intelligent enough to carry themselves professionally in intellectual exchange. In other cases, they are so personally affected by an issue that simply because someone has contradictory information means nothing to what they've personally experienced.
Some don't like debating because of their pacifist nature. They don't want people to insult or hate each other midway or after the debate. They want everyone to get along and be friends. They see debates as nothing more than a match waiting to be lit by one spark which will soon burn the entire house down. These people strive for peace and harmony more than anything else.
Lastly, some people don't like debates because they just don't care. They don't care who thinks what or what's true. They just want to live their life with their viewpoints and be done with it all. They feel the effort debaters put into debating is not worth getting into and would prefer to live life in a more carefree fashion. Do what you want wherever you want; just don't tell me about it. They usually see debaters as nothing more than egotists who want to prove somebody wrong.
But I personally believe all of these are misconceived ideas on why I debate and why I feel others debate with me.
All debates are in vain because nobody changes their mind.
It's true. Many people don't leave a debate with an entirely new opinion. Many debates are indeed emotionally charged; however, why do these conditions make all debates in vain? The purpose to debate was never about changing somebody's viewpoints. In fact, it should almost never be about changing someone's opinion. One of the most important purposes of debating your views is for you yourself to see how firmly you truly do believe in your philosophy.
Debates are like scientific experiments in the fact that they have the power to test how solid or reasonable an opinion is. You will never truly know how reasonable or solid your philosophy is unless you argue about it with many people. The more you argue about it, the more holes you will see, and the more adjustments you will need to make. Depending on these holes, you will either reject the philosophy all together or simply modify your viewpoint. If there are little to no holes, then more than likely it is a very solid idea you can carry around.
You still must constantly test your philosophy. There is never a time you should stop. New information is gathered, new holes are found, and new opinions and viewpoints come into play. This is why debating is healthy for any individual who wants to discover the truth. The truth can only be found when one is finally standing above all through the rigorous tests of intellectual exchange. So, as you can see, it's not truly important whether you changed someone's mind. It's the simple fact that you communicated in such a professional way that they have to respect not only your viewpoint, but the holes in their own. I will talk more about this later on.
But debates could turn into flame wars / I hate arguments. I want to see people compromising and not fighting each other.
What about the pacifists? Even if people learn something new, what if one of these things included grudges and disdain for the opposing side? Even in intellectual exchanges, people hold hidden biases and grudges. It's human nature and there is truly nothing we can do about it.
And that is exactly why I feel like the pacifist viewpoint isn't worth having when it comes to debates.
Humans have different experiences, and it is foolish to believe that these different experiences aren't different enough to say that human clashing isn't inevitable. These experiences need to be known. It is much worse to not allow arguments and debates for the simple fact that someone may be hurt. It is in fact possible that a hurt person may need to be heard; otherwise, they, and many others, will remain hurt.
Imagine a world without debate. A world that had nothing but agreements. This world would be ripe for the most extreme conformity ever conceived. Want to know what kind of world that was? It was the world Galileo lived in.
Everyone knows about Galileo's time. If you don't, I'll give you a quick overview. Galileo was the scientist who invented the telescope. He discovered many new things about the universe that were absolutely crazy at the time. The most controversial theory he pointed out was heliocentrism, or the idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the Sun revolving around the Earth. It was an idea that didn't originate by Galileo, but his discoveries made the idea worth debating against what the church knew at the time. Want to know what the church did?
He was persecuted. He wasn't the only scientist who was physically threatened, either. Many scientists of the past were threatened and dissuaded from publishing and offering new theories on the physical world. Some historians today will tell you that if it weren't for centuries of persecuting great minds, we would live in a much more advanced world today for the simple fact that accepting facts at the time of discovery leads to accepting even more facts later on. It as if the church and people at the time were handicapping themselves for the sake of conformity and agreement.
And I, unfortunately, see extreme pacifists the same way. When you discourage debate for the sake of agreement, you are only encouraging conformity, stagnation, and the status-quo. The world and the humans that live in it are forever changing and growing every day. New ideas and ways of thinking must always present themselves, otherwise, who would think they were wrong if no one brought up disagreements? It took debates to realize the validity of science that we take granted for today. It took debates to realize that colored people were the same as white people. Everything we take for granted today was because someone went out and constantly debated with people. Debating
brings progress; peace and harmony brings conformity and stagnation.
So is it worth the effort?
I personally think so. Debating is as much as finding your self-identity as it is progressing mankind, and it doesn't stop there. When you are debating, you are not only putting your ideas out for examination and examining ideas others put out, but you are also learning more about the world and some parts of yourself you may not have ever known. When two people come together with differing viewpoints to then share how they feel on the topics, they are exchanging their unique experience. This gives you a chance to understand something you may absolutely have no idea about it. "Victory" in debate isn't settled by winning/losing or changing someone's mind. That is such a black-and-white interpretation. The true "victory" in a sincere debate is when you leave with understanding and acknowledgment. You don't have to agree with someone to understand them.
Any debate can create this for you no matter how one-sided it could possibly be. For example, gay marriage. I think for the most part, that debate is one-sided. Regardless of what side you're on, any logical person would admit that gay marriage objectively is perfectly fine.
However, if you were still debating with even the most extreme fundamentalist, you can still leave with something. You can still leave with understanding. Understanding doesn't necessarily require that you dissect their logical reasoning. Understanding only requires answering the question why. Why would a person be against gay marriage? I believe all humans always have a reason for things. This reason is something they hold dear. These reasons usually involve common themes. Justice, authority, knowledge, empathy; whatever it may be, someone always has a theme behind the reason they stand for something.
So now you may be thinking what good would it do for you to learn of someone's reasoning behind a view you simply can't stand? Well, I can't say it would do much for you other than the simple fact that you just learn a new way to look at the world that may not exactly be your way.
Understanding people is one of my favorite things about debating. Yes, you won't agree with them, may never agree with them, and may not even be able to stand their presence; however, I get a good feeling out of understanding why that is. Understanding why you are different from someone, understanding what happened in our experiences to create that difference, and trying to see through their eyes is a great feeling for me. It is truly something to learn and see many vast human philosophies and experiences. My open-minded post is certainly relevant in this case. With so many different philosophies, regimens, and thoughts.. who wouldn't want to learn and feel them all? I won't even get to feel them all, but I can learn as many as I can.
So, debating can be a learning experience about the world and the different people around you. People who debate certainly open themselves to having a more open-mind than those who don't. In fact, it is a psychological fact that people who only choose to talk with those who agree with them and have similar mindsets diverge into developing extreme opinions. This is called group polarization. This is a well-known phenomenon that occurs even here. Remember all the Smogon versus Serebii arguments? Remember the huge contrast between people who played to win versus people who played to collect and for other miscellaneous reasons that didn't tie into winning a battle?
Remember when cheating and cloning were hot topics?
What essentially happens in these arguments is that there is a person who only follows and listens to viewpoints that relate to their own views. They also may surround themselves mostly of people who play like them, think like them, and always agree with them. They rally around together, and any information or opinion that heavily scrutinizes them, even if it is valid, is immediately discarded because this "group" all collectively share the same opinion. Want to know what would easily fix this? If only just one person in the entire group who self-identifies as one of them stands up and points that ******** out.
Too many people on both sides were so attached to their groups that their opinions began to go to the extreme end of pretty much assuming and insulting anyone who were simply different in mindset. Serebii users assumed Smogon were super elitists despite never meeting them, and Smogon assumed Serebii users were butthurt teenagers despite never meeting them. Replace either category with AR users, cloners, collectors, or even generation one nostalgia critics.
One person who self-identifies with them is all it takes. It gets them to think. It gets them to self-reflect when a person within the group has to challenge and debate rather than conform. As you can see, when everyone, including the people within your own mindset, debate with you, your opinions and view of the world turn that less extreme. All it takes is one person. One person can make the difference. I often dream of being that one person sometimes. Don't confuse this with having an unpopular opinion just to have one, though. It must always be with your gut and how you feel.
Conclusion
So, you see? Debating is only not pointless, but it is absolutely necessary. Ideas must be tested, progress must be sought, the truth must be found, and you must understand your own self-identity and the others around you.
But the most important thing, and I mean, the most important thing, is that you must question everything. You must dissect everything in some way. You must strive to have a viewpoint that is solid in foundation and isn't extreme. Debating seems to do all of this in one.
Galileo challenged and debated. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged and debated. Elizabeth Cady Stanton challenged and debated. Some of the greatest people and minds of history all share one thing in common: they pointed out ********. Many were tortured, threatened, and killed for simply challenging and debating ideas. To think some of you want to tell me that it takes too much effort and isn't worth it... but was it worth it for these guys?
If they were brave enough to challenge and debate ideas at the risk of their ****ing lives, how would I live with myself knowing that I had the ability to speak and debate but didn't use it?
This message isn't to recruit people to the debate forum or anything; it's merely to show everyone that people who go there to debate and enjoy participating in discussions aren't just people with egos up their asses desperately wanting to one-up a person on the Internet.
Now back to our regular misc joking, laughing, and having casual fun.
Last edited by a moderator:
