The Anti-Debate Club
Tomorrow’s events:
Naturalising Sense-making w/ Dave Snowden. September 3rd, 10th, 24th, and October 1st. 2:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Shame Breakthrough Bootcamp w/ A.J. Bond. Every Thursday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
Liberating Structures: Rely on Surprise w/ Keith McCandless. October 1st @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
An event to get excited about:
Bioenergetic Workout w/ Devaraj Sandberg. October 3rd @ 10:00 AM ET. Click the image below to RSVP.
Devaraj Sandberg visits The Stoa to lead an introductory session on Bioenergetics—a neo-Reichian bodywork practice. Be sure to wear loose clothing and have space to move.
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September 30, 2020
I watched the American presidential debates last night. Man, I want my 90 minutes back. Now, whatever that was, it was not a debate, and I am not going to waste my time or yours doing a hot take on it. What did come to mind afterward was my previous thinking on the anti-debate.
I alluded before that I was involved in a top-secret underground debate club here in Toronto. I am not ready to talk about that, partly because the debate psychotechnology we created may be too dangerous to be released without a supportive ecology of practice.
But the experience of that debate club was amazing. I got my ass kicked, philosophically, multiple times, and I was humbled each time. I do not think I could have written the memetic tribe white paper without that humbling experience. In that paper, in the “Reinventing Debate” section, we recommended that debates get bifurcated into two types: Sport Debates and Sensemaking Debates.
On sports debates: participants debate for combat and entertainment. This would gamify the desire to engage in verbal combat for its own sake, with truth as a potential byproduct. They could be viewed as the UFC of the mind. While it may seem cynical to sponsor an avenue for the fiery and often toxic form debates can take, we think that diverting those urges away from sensemaking desires is a good harm-reduction strategy.
On sensemaking debates: participants debate for understanding and exploration. This would allow the purported values of debate to actually flourish. This can also include philosophical sandboxing, the adoption of ideologies as a method actor. Spaces could be made where participants take on ideological roles so as to better understand them, and to develop the skill to take them off.
In the follow-up article called What Our Politics Needs Now: Anti-Debates, we proposed what one of these sensemaking debates could look like, and the phrase “Anti-Debates” seemed like the right term to popularize the concept.
The problem I see with people designing debates or argument mapping apps, is that they are tethered to the notion that these things have to lead to “the truth.” Yeah, the truth is great, but good luck with that. Similar to the essence of wild reasoning, I do not think the anti-debates should be designed with the pressure to discover the truth.
What is important is not what you arrive at. What is important is what you are displaying. From the anti-debate article:
Anti-debates would require a new mindset, one in which the participant is prepared to publicly enter into a collaborative space. Candidates who can reside in uncertainty and admit to not knowing all the answers would shine. Those who show talent at anti-debating will be the candidates we begin to trust. And in our age of massive complexity filled with ‘unknown unknowns,' these are exactly the leaders we need most.
You trust people who say what they believe to be true, and that includes a genuine “I do not know” when they reach aporia. The shtick of always knowing, always being confident, is beyond tiresome. The hyperconfidence that politicians learn to display in the spectacle is itself a “supernormal stimuli,” designed to hijack our instincts to follow the alpha.
I was tentatively offered to be the “Director of Praxis” at Perspectiva before COVID, and the idea was for me to launch this anti-debate concept there. They are going in a new direction, so now there is an opening to launch this thing here.
My original plan was this: create an “Anti-Debate Club,” prototype it until the modality is tight, then let the groups spread around the world. Similar to what Toastmasters International did with public speaking groups. Once that is underway, start a petition to encourage a smaller country, maybe a Scandinavian one, to test out the debate modality for their elections.
As you might expect by now from this Stoic Cowboy, I sense we can do this grassroots style. I do not think we need a big budget or some fancy business plan. That is old world thinking. I sense all we need is to jump on our existential horses, give a virtuous yeehaw, and ride into the noosphere with the daemon blazing.
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