Your reasons for debating on SDMB: A Poll

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is just a poll about debating on this board, especially in Great Debates. Please don’t bring any actual debates into this thread.

The board motto, as everybody knows, is “fighting ignorance”. And GD is where many people claim to be doing that. I’d like to know what people’s personal motivations are for engaging in “Great Debates”.

  1. How much do you participate in Great Debate threads?
    (frequently / sometimes / seldom / never)

  2. How much do you read GD threads?
    (frequently / sometimes / seldom / never)

This is the main question.

  1. WHY do you engage in debate on this board?
    What are your goals for participating in Great Debates discussions? (or if you don’t participate, suppose you decided to – what would be your primary goals)? State all answers that apply.

a. To have a contest that I can try to win (as in a high-school debating team).
b. To fight ignorance by showing my opponents why they are wrong and why I am right.
c. To attempt to change other people’s minds to my way of thinking.
d. To force myself to improve my own arguments for my positions, and keep them free of common logical fallacies.
e. To engourage my opponents to frame their arguments in the best possible way, free of logical fallacies.
f. To attempt to better understand the merit of my opponent’s strongest arguments, even if I disagree with their inevitable conclusions.
g. To try to make my opponents understand my point of view, even if I know they will not come around to my way of thinking.
h. Because it’s something to do during work hours, and it’s more interesting than my job.
i. OTHER. (Please explain).
Sorry if any of the choices seem to be leading. I’m sure I haven’t thought of all the possible motivations that a person might have for engaging in debates on this board. I only have my own perceptions as to why people spend so much time debating here. So if these don’t fit your own personal rationale, please feel free to explain in your own words.

2

1: Still new to boards but sometimes
2: Sometimes
3: Other: I have always found I learn in debates and arguments
Quite often my opinions are changed and more often, I can at least have a greater understanding of a different point of view.

3

To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of the women!

Okay, serious answers:

  1. Seldom
  2. Sometimes
  3. Pretty much all of the above. Mostly, though, I don’t expect to change the mind of my opponent, as much as I hope to sway the opinions of those reading the debate who haven’t made up their mind about the issue yet. I generally assume anyone entering a debate has considered their opinion at least as deeply as I have, and is no less sure of their conclusions.
4

give people an opportunity to see things from my point of view, which I do not think has been expressed yet. Which seems to be similar to g. There are also elements of d. If I type out a post for GD, it helps me to think about what I believe and why.

I will admit that I almost never contribute to threads in GD unless I discover an interesting thread while it has fewer than 20 posts. I read debates to see how other people think and argue, but often times I don’t want to feel obligated to read all the other posts, and so I tend not to post once I start feeling like people are establishing sides and preparing to fight to the death.

5
  1. Seldom
  2. Seldom
  3. d,f,and h
6

Should have previewed-
The answers were

  1. seldom
  2. Sometimes
  3. Other: to {rest of post same as previous post by me}

give people an opportunity to see things from my point of view, which I do not think has been expressed yet. Which seems to be similar to g. There are also elements of d. If I type out a post for GD, it helps me to think about what I believe and why.

I will admit that I almost never contribute to threads in GD unless I discover an interesting thread while it has fewer than 20 posts. I read debates to see how other people think and argue, but often times I don’t want to feel obligated to read all the other posts, and so I tend not to post once I start feeling like people are establishing sides and preparing to fight to the death.

7
  1. Seldom
  2. Seldom
  3. b, c, d

There just aren’t that many topics that I feel like debating with total strangers. Either the topic isn’t that important to me, or the other side is obviously wrong. :smiley: About the only debate I will dive right into would be one on Gun Control (which means using both hands!)

8

It varies. I’ll call it frequently, but I don’t know how you’d define that.

I check every day. I don’t always open a thread.

d. To force myself to improve my own arguments for my positions, and keep them free of common logical fallacies.

g. To try to make my opponents understand my point of view, even if I know they will not come around to my way of thinking.

G and its partner to understand my opponents’ point of view even if I know I won’t come around to their way of thinking are the most important to me. Exchange of ideas. I don’t even know I hold some of the positions I hold until I try to talk about them.

I have on occasion changed my mind while reading in GD, by the way.

9
  1. Frequently
  2. Frequently
  3. Pretty much all of the above.
10

  1. Seldom (Very Seldom)

  2. Frequently

  3. (i) I try to only enter a debate if I can add something I’m fairly sure of, backed up with a reasonably accurate cite. I’m not all that keen on debating and can often not provide a cite for things I just feel in my gut. Many things I would be inclined to debate are nothing more than my own opinion, but I can’t dig up a cite for that so I just don’t bother.

11

I sometimes post in GD, frequently read.

I can’t keep track of multiple choice questions with like 50 options, so I’ll just say this: it’s fun to match wits with people who don’t agree with me. Sometimes I learn things. Hopefully, when I post in my areas of expertise on contentious issues, other people can learn something from me.

Also, it is refreshing to read the thoughts of people who aren’t the same kind of people as me. I don’t know any real computer experts, people who live in rural areas, physicians, or people who used to be homeless. I like to see what they think about things that are going on.

12

1) How much do you participate in Great Debate threads?
Seldom. In the year that I’ve been a member, I’ve only posted in 10 GD threads – and the two most recent ones were moved to GD after I’d posted in them. I haven’t deliberately posted in a GD thread since Christmas Eve.

2) How much do you read GD threads?
Seldom. Sometimes I look at GD just to see what’s being discussed, and every now and then a thread will catch my eye and I’ll give it a peek. Usually, though, I avoid that forum.

3) WHY do you engage in debate on this board?
Sometimes b. To fight ignorance by showing my opponents why they are wrong and why I am right, but usually some combination of d. To force myself to improve my own arguments for my positions, and keep them free of common logical fallacies and f. To attempt to better understand the merit of my opponent’s strongest arguments, even if I disagree with their inevitable conclusions.

13

**1) How much do you participate in Great Debate threads? **
frequently

2) How much do you read GD threads?
frequently

**This is the main question.

  1. WHY do you engage in debate on this board?**

i. OTHER. (Please explain).
You didn’t think I was going to embrace any of your straw-man positions “a” through “i”, now did you? :wink:

Some questions are GQ material — there is a factual right answer.

The answer to many questions, however, has less to do with possessing the factual data than it does with how you organize that data in your head agains the backdrop of the rest of the things you know. So “fighting ignorance” on those topics has less to do with “here is the correct answer and here is a cite” than with “OK, hold this concept in your mind…got that? OK, now watch how it applies to this-here subject matter differently as a function of how that concept is implemented…now do you see the sense in which this thing, that is conventionally thought of as blahblahblah, actually makes a lot of sense as an aspect of this parameter?”

A fellow named Charles Taylor wrote a piece on Hermeneutics: the Science of Interpretation, describing the relationship of meaning and knowledge in such a way that whatever is being understood by someone has authentic meaning which can be clear and apparent or vague and unclear, and which can be construed or misconstrued by the subject to whom it has these meanings. Hermeneutics seeks to clarify through interpretation, in such a way that the meaning of the object becomes more apparent to the subject. When something becomes a topic of debate or consideration due to ambiguities of meaning or different readings of its meaning (including different opinions as to its clarity and the extent to which it makes sense at all), those who perceive the meaning that it has for them render their understanding into new words through which to convey that meaning.

It’s an art, not a science; if your audience reacts by saying “But it doesn’t seem that way to me at all”, the only thing you can do (aside from shrug and give up on the communication attempt at hand) is to try expressing it with different words. Meanwhile, the other person is doing the same, and you’re trying to parse out from their words how it is that they perceive matters.

Is it ever adversarial? Sure, at times. At least some of the time it’s not the person I’m debating with that I’m most centrally trying to communicate with, but rather the collective set of other folks reading the thread. And under those circumstances my attempts to paint the old mind-picture with the words may be more geared to using the person I’m ostensibly debating with as Exhibit A: “Note, please, how UserName’s rationale, if applied back to him, would let me do such-and-such, which UserName says would be criminal, and yet as long as the person doing the applying gets to be him, it’s an act of compassion”. That’s might cause UserName to see the point I’m making, but it’s admittedly more geared towards causing You, reading that thread, to nod in concurrence and give my perspective serious consideration.

14

  1. Sometimes

  2. Frequently

  3. b, c, d, f, g, and to learn something.

15

**1) How much do you participate in Great Debate threads? **

Seldom.

2) How much do you read GD threads?

Frequently.

This is the main question.

3) WHY do you engage in debate on this board?
What are your goals for participating in Great Debates discussions? (or if you don’t participate, suppose you decided to – what would be your primary goals)? State all answers that apply.

f. To attempt to better understand the merit of my opponent’s strongest arguments, even if I disagree with their inevitable conclusions.

**g. To try to make my opponents understand my point of view, even if I know they will not come around to my way of thinking. **

i. OTHER. (Please explain).

Other: To encourage myself to be openminded enough to be convinced to change my mind or otherwise modify my position on an issue.

16

Heh heh. :slight_smile: I said that I’m sure I didn’t come up with all possible rationales (and if I did, people would be really pissed off about the number of multiple-choice possibilities!)

I’m talking more about the typical debate topics, which pretty much tend to be more opinion-oriented. Not the types of things that can be answered in GQ.

But just to be clear, my real question is not “Why do you (people in general) engage in debates here?”, but actually, “Why do you personally engage in debates here?” What are your own personal goals? What do you hope to accomplish by your participation in debates on SDMB?

From your last paragraph, it sounds like your own motivation is not so much to convince your opponent of your arguments, but to make good arguments in hopes that other people reading the thread – (perhaps people who are undecided on the issue?) – will be swayed, or at least will give your arguments serious consideration. (Did I interpret that paragraph correctly?)

17

And that’s another reason I don’t get into the debates. Pretty much every topic is already tackled from 14 different directions. I just like to read other people’s opinions, no matter how they might fit in with mine. I don’t add any more noise to the situation, yet I get to see topics expounded upon by people who enjoy doing the expounding.

18
  1. seldom The people there are scare-wy and it tends to get too confrontational. Nice place to visit…

2)** frequently** I find the quality of posts to be high, the points well made and I get great citations to follow so I can form a better opinion of the topic. I like to study good posts and posters in order to strengthen my own writing style by emulating well written and well-thought out posts. Also I look at the bad posts to learn what not to do.

3)** i.** I do not like thinking of people as “allies” or “opponents” in debate, so I really only want to get clarification of points that particular posters have made. I use the board to help me form or consolidate opinions, especially when I do not have the time nor inclination to wade through all the noise that is out there.

19

Without reading any other answers:

  1. How much do you participate in Great Debate threads?
    seldom

  2. How much do you read GD threads?
    frequently

  3. WHY do you engage in debate on this board?

To force myself to improve my own arguments for my positions, and keep them free of common logical fallacies.
To attempt to better understand the merit of my opponent’s strongest arguments, even if I disagree with their inevitable conclusions.
o try to make my opponents understand my point of view, even if I know they will not come around to my way of thinking.
Because it’s something to do during work hours, and it’s more interesting than my job.
OTHER. (Please explain).
Also:
To teach myself how to debate better.
To understand the other’s POV and often learn about POV’s I’ve never heard.
To further my own knowledge.

20

Frequently, Frequently and

c. To attempt to change other people’s minds to my way of thinking.
d. To force myself to improve my own arguments for my positions, and keep them free of common logical fallacies.
g. To try to make my opponents (and lurkers) understand my point of view, even if I know they will not come around to my way of thinking.

and

i. **To be persuaded by others. ** I’ve had no axioms reversed, but I have changed my way of thinking on a number of things as a result of GD. Usually it’s before I post something; i.e. what I end up posting is somewhat different from what I had originally thought. So my opinions do change, though you rarely see it in the threads.

and, most of all,

j. **To be smarter for the effort. ** Why do dogs chew bones? Any given issue may be of small import; but the process of arguing over it makes my mind and my words sharper.