>>40371575>debates are all bullshit>nobody ever won a debate by being correct, it's just about who can talk louder and project "correctness"I'd say like 0.5% are actually legit and worthwhile but the necessary (but DEFINITELY not sufficient) conditions are: high IQ, very educated, quasi-autistic traits, heavily prepares for debates in advance, longform reader and writer, and willing to bet real money on factual claims and predictions
Some rich guy started a "boonk/deboonk" company and posed a $100,000 debate challenge for anyone who wanted to contest any of their findings. Each party puts up $100k into an escrow account, two neutral judges are selected, then after like 15 hours of debating the judges decide who is more likely to be correct about the facts. If both judges pick the same person, they win. Those debates are close to a true Platonic ideal of a debate
In this case some random dude accepted the challenge a year or so ago and won. The company still maintains they were in the right, but at the end of the day the challenger got the $100,000 from them and also mostly won in the court of public opinion. That kind of stuff creates actual rigor and integrity in debates.
From my understanding this debate was also the single most influential shifter of people's opinions on possibly the most contested empirical topic of the past few years; one where each side has a plausible case and it's not the usual academics vs. retards situation. So this one debate proves not only the potential for good debates but their potential impact.
If anyone's interested in the details: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-rootclaim