Is Style over Substance necessary for Practical Debating?

[wolveraptor]

I just realized something: the more I "smack down bullshit" with extreme prejudice (with liberal use of the words "cockgoblin" and "dumbass"), the more people dig into their position and refuse to admit defeat. Maybe a shortcoming of this board's debating style is that it fails to convince anyone, not because it's illogical, but because it is harsh.

Isn't the end purpose of a debate to convince the other person that you're right? I don't think you can do that if you sprinkle your text with curses and such. The most concession you'll get is, "yeah, well...fuck you!" or something.

[UCBooties]

when debating elsewhere, it usualy helps to start out with polite phraseology as you hand them their asses. However, in the face of mounting evidence of their own stupidity, they will most likely revert to sophmoric insults first. You can try to play the better man and continue to rationaly everscerate them or you can let loose with the righteous flame of logic as you so choose at that point. However unloading right of the bat is going to make you a hostile witness so to speak and damage your credibility and thereby the credibility of your points in the eyes of your opponants and any undecided observers. Whether you are nice or not has no bearing on the validity of your points, but it does enormously effect how those points will be recieved.

[Darth Wong]

I just realized something: the more I "smack down bullshit" with extreme prejudice (with liberal use of the words "cockgoblin" and "dumbass"), the more people dig into their position and refuse to admit defeat. Maybe a shortcoming of this board's debating style is that it fails to convince anyone, not because it's illogical, but because it is harsh.

Isn't the end purpose of a debate to convince the other person that you're right? I don't think you can do that if you sprinkle your text with curses and such. The most concession you'll get is, "yeah, well...fuck you!" or something.

You can usually tell, before too long, just how reasonable someone is. My policy is: if he seems like the kind of person who might listen to reason, you try to convince him. If he seems like an idiot (which the vast majority of creationists are), then there's no point trying to convince him and you might as well just smack him down with extreme prejudice for entertainment value.

[UCBooties]

Fun yes, but since no debate is in a vacume and there have to be at least some undecided people observing, isn't it better to appear both better informed and more reasonable?

[Surlethe]

Isn't the end purpose of a debate to convince the other person that you're right? I don't think you can do that if you sprinkle your text with curses and such. The most concession you'll get is, "yeah, well...fuck you!" or something.

No, the purpose of a debate is to discover the truth about a claim; the manner of the discovery is irrelevant to the final conclusion. However, if the person you're debating is a dishonest moron, he probably won't acknowledge the conclusion of the debate, regardless of whether or not you lay the SmackDown.

[Rogue 9]

I just realized something: the more I "smack down bullshit" with extreme prejudice (with liberal use of the words "cockgoblin" and "dumbass"), the more people dig into their position and refuse to admit defeat. Maybe a shortcoming of this board's debating style is that it fails to convince anyone, not because it's illogical, but because it is harsh.

Isn't the end purpose of a debate to convince the other person that you're right? I don't think you can do that if you sprinkle your text with curses and such. The most concession you'll get is, "yeah, well...fuck you!" or something.

That's not style over substance; substance does not preclude style. Style over substance is dismissing a claim because it was presented rudely, but there's nothing that says you can't present a very substantial argument in a polite manner.

[Darth Wong]

Fun yes, but since no debate is in a vacume and there have to be at least some undecided people observing, isn't it better to appear both better informed and more reasonable?

Everything depends on the situation; to be honest I'm growing tired of people posting these "please give me some universal rule for how to behave" threads. It's fucking stupid; you have to tailor your style for the environment, the audience, your opponent, etc.

[wolveraptor]

This specifically concerns Protest Warrior: I feel like I'm getting no where, even though I did manage to extract a sort of concession. On the one hand, I was able to get through the debate without putting an axe to my head because of my relative hostility. On the other hand, the concession just wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would be.

Or are those morons just too damn stupid?

Btw, the topic was on gay marriage.

[Metatwaddle]

If you're talking about the topic that was linked to in another SLAM thread, then I really don't think you're going to be convincing them of anything. If you want to convince people that you're right then politeness is nice, but I think those people are so far gone that it really doesn't matter and you can go ahead and bitchslap the hell out of them.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Well, your tactics should really depend on two things: location and goal. If your goal is to gain followers, and you are in a public setting or a formal debate, no, you don't go hog-wild with the insults or the invectives. It doesn't make you look good, and in the sad real world, many people don't care about arguments, rather how the arguments are presented. Then, in some arenas, they care about the argument, but it has to be dressed up properly.

In many cases, profane people will simply be ignored, and no one gets anywhere, so it can be quite counter-productive. Many-a-time, poor behavior will turn the audience off to the speaker, even if the speaker is correct and the people would normally be receptive to the message.

However, if you are in an area in which it is accepted, or if it is not a serious academic atmosphere, then I guess it would be fine, since it really doesn't matter then.

[Darth Wong]

Oh for fuck's sake, you were talking about ProtestWarrior? Those guys are worthless trolls; you'd have better luck trying to convert Osama Bin Laden to Buddhism.

[Ariphaos]

In really difficult situations the best you can possibly hope for is to thoroughly educate them on specific points. Being civil and diplomatic helps when outnumbered and outgunned, so to speak. Even still, in one instance I faced a moderator who, rather than debate my points, decided to put up anti-athiest and anti-evolutionist joke pictures in the discussions.

Then defended them saying that he had already refuted my points, saw nothing to debate, thought the jokes were perfectly accurate and appropriate...

Then he lost half of us, along with a few creationists.

Honestly, though, know where to fight your battles. What little I have seen on Protest Warrior... Does the word "Festering cesspool" fit? There are some people that just can't be dealt with in a rational fashion. Very frequently these people are either trolling or have some actual mental deficiency, known or not, and it is better to refer them to a quality mental hospital than to debate them.

[wolveraptor]

So that's all I'll get from them, eh? Thanks for the heads up.

I should've known, actually, what with the 3/4ths of the site being solely for socially conservative propaganda.

[Spoonist]

I just realized something: the more I "smack down bullshit" with extreme prejudice (with liberal use of the words "cockgoblin" and "dumbass"), the more people dig into their position and refuse to admit defeat. Maybe a shortcoming of this board's debating style is that it fails to convince anyone, not because it's illogical, but because it is harsh.

Isn't the end purpose of a debate to convince the other person that you're right? I don't think you can do that if you sprinkle your text with curses and such. The most concession you'll get is, "yeah, well...fuck you!" or something.

I have had similar topics up a few times.
In real life I've had several successes with making people actually change the way they think. But here in debate settings and elsewhere on the internet I'm quite lousy.
This is because my technique is usually to ask relevant questions and let the person by the way they have to formulate the answers slowly come to the realisation that their thinking is flawed.
I'm a very good listener and can make people think that they have reached a certain decision by themselves while in fact I've been nudging them in the right direction all the time.

What does this have to do with you?
Well you really have to decide why you are in these debates and what you want to get out of them.
Over the internet you will hardly convince someone that the way they are thinking is wrong. Otherwise the first trekkie vs warsie debate would have been the end of it.
What is so effective with internet smackdowns is not that you get to defeat the person you are debating, but that all those out there who read the debate get to think both sides of the question every now and then, and the lurkers only care for Style and rarely substance.
So by smacking down someone you might not get that nice closure you want because the one you are debating wont change, but maybe along the way you have changed someone who has followed the debate but not participated.