About a month ago, my wife forwarded to me from a local mailing list a call for volunteers to help judge in a high school debating tournament.  I eage

High-school debate: Pro - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe

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2024-12-22 18:00:02

About a month ago, my wife forwarded to me from a local mailing list a call for volunteers to help judge in a high school debating tournament. I eagerly expressed interest. Participants in high school debate practice civility and intellectual rigor.

Last week the tournament was held. It was a very positive experience. I also think that a project to train an artificial intelligence model to judge such a debate would be worth attempting.

If I were a college president, I would require every freshman to participate in this sort of debate tournament. If I were in charge of Twitter (or X or whatever), I would require users to participate in this sort of debating activity as a prerequisite for being allowed to post.

As you know, I believe that knowledge comes from social learning, from the give and take between different viewpoints. I emphasize the process of how argument is conducted. My most well-known book, The Three Languages of Politics, reflected on the observation that pundits do not engage in open-minded argument with the other side, but instead use demagoguery and straw-manning to try to close the minds of people on their own side.

The rules of high school debate are very consistent with the processes that I have discussed. For example, go back to my essay on Fantasy Intellectual Teams or, more recently, Six Laws of Social Learning.

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