Big debates are FAKE! How can we do better?

[shanen]

7. Have you ever participated in any formal debates?

Actually, I never did L-D (Lincoln-Douglas) debates, but always team (C-X) debates (and some extemp). But let me assure you that it is really easy to consume an entire hour with a single topic and only two positions (affirmative and negative) on that topic. The topic will NOT be exhausted and you won't be able to cover every aspect of the topic.

You can refute me easily, however. Can you point at a single example of a substantive statement from the large "unwieldy" GOP debates of 2016? I don't think so, and most of the reason was desperation to use tiny slices of time to maximum effect. All that survived were Trump's insults.

I don't want to squabble about definitions, but 10 people does NOT a debate make. Actually, one of the most important techniques of good debating is to make sure the definitions of key terms are what you think they are. Now I would say that it's part of Level 3 (deframing) techniques, but many real debates can be won or lost because of the definitions that get established early in the debate.

Let me try to word it in terms of your favorite candidate, Kamala Harris. I actually like her, though she isn't my favorite. In terms of my suggestion, what topical question would she like to discuss at some length? If she used my suggestion, then she would get half of the one-on-one debate as time to discuss that topic as deeply as she can, and her main cost would be having to participate in a second debate where she would be responding to the other candididate's favorite topic.

By the way, in case it isn't obvious, I think she should pick her question based on the opponent. If she knows that the candidate agrees with her on one issue, then she should try to pick some other topic where she knows they have clear disagreements.

One more thing: In the context of L-D debates, the excuse for any misstatement or error is always baked in: "Yes, I said that in the debate, but it was my job to take that side of the argument in that debate and all of you know that my REAL position is quite different." However in my longer version of the suggestion, I suggested controlling the videos. Perhaps there shouldn't even be a live audience?