Originally Posted by Joe@actsii

I am looking for information & advice on how to debate. I was hoping that the community here could give me some help. Any words of wisdom, experiences, web sights, etc. would be appreciated.

Read through some of the older formal debates here, (debate tournaments forum) and pay close attention to any post by dsadevil. He left us long ago, but IMO he was one of the best.

Did he leave the fourm or did he die? Also thank you for the information.

I have no idea, (not sure anyone here does) but I'd love to see him come back!

You're welcome, but that's enough of the learning process now. Just continue to say what's on your mind, be respectful, and you should fit in quite well here!

(on second thought, lose some respectfulness if you want to fit in here! )

Hi Guys...

I was never great at debating and perhaps I could learn quite a bit from this forum and the above fore mentioned gentleman.

I personally see debates as learning tools. I'm not so much out to "convert" the other person/people to my way of thinking but rather to get them to teach me something.

I know that seems somehow backwards but it can be a useful tool when you want to learn more about the otherside.

Mark

not backwards at all. That's how it's supposed to work. You also learn more when trying to support your side. I've found that when debating once in a while attempting to prove myself right, I realize that all the evidence seems to point the other way. It teaches you to think, support opinions, and you learn a lot as well. All in all it's fun. I see you're new, welcome.

My friend, im sure this has already crossed your mind, but it is imperitave that you understand where the person you are debating with comes from. Argue their side for them, but not so much as to take away from your point-of-view on the matter. My wife-to-be does this with me every time we debate issues, and it hurts my arguements more times than not. For example, if we were to debate gay adoption, you would want to be able to support and discredit gay and lesbian family structures.

The secret to a good debate is to tell them a story that doesn't lead anywhere... like the time I went to Boston: I woke up early that morning to go to Boston, but then I remembered I was in Las Vegas, "How'd I get here?" I asked myself. Turns out I really wasn't in Las Vegas but in Pittsburgh. So as I walked around the Steel City, I noticed not everything was made of steel, so I complained to the mayor that my hair dryer didn't work. After a six-minute coffee break, I went back to the President's house and thought about Starbucks the rest of the day. Afterwords, I went to meet President Bush (when he bailed me out of jail), he said he had no more money to bail people out with, so I gave him a nickel. back in those days nickels were made of wood and had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Give me five bees for a quarter," youl'd say...

Sorry, I got off track a bit...

Another tactic for fighting the war is to use... for a debate is to use all facts, but no opinions, so people don't know if you are for it or against it. FOr example: "What is your opinion of nuclear fusion?" You respond, "Nuclear fusion is when two hydrogen atoms come together to form a helium atom." You are not wrong, but you avoided the question, so there is two pluses! At the end of debate, say the people can form their own opinions with the facts you gave them, then make a big long speech on how not to rock the boat, against the lyrics to a song.

Or you can talk about some completly diffrent, like instead of talking about nuclear fusion, talk about global warming, then when the question-asker asks you why you did not answer the question in proper context, tell them that topic is boring.

Now if you are in a serious debate, do not listen to a word I just... typed. Instead, listen to this advice given to me by a great professor, Dr. Hitrockbottom: "When giving a debate, be sure not to answer truthfully, as the people do not want to hear truth, they want to hear opinions that match theirs. So, find the shared opinions of the crowd, and just repeat what they belive in, do not enforce them or break them, just repeat their ideas." Great teacher, great person, too bad he doesn't exist...

aks the question that you know you can asnwer.

Originally Posted by Dr.dino

aks the question that you know you can asnwer.

One VERY important thing to remember, since this is a typed debate is to try to use spell check and put together coherent sentences. When you post monkey turd dodo talk as above, no one will take you seriously! If it's not worth YOUR time to post YOUR thoughts correctly, it's not worth MY time to read it and certainly not to respond!

you have the right attitude. debating is usually more about testing your own opinion than shooting down your opponent's. but there are ways to do it that make your debate more effective regardless of your intent. the best method is asking questions. questions do a lot of wonderful things in a debate. they are open-ended and invite the discussion to continue. they force the other contributors to think along the topic of the question, rather than repeating the pre-memorized scripts they were already armed with. and they make you put more thought into your own contributions by initiating critical thought

another thing you'll notice is that on this forum you'll find a lot of debates, but more often you'll find a lot of discussions. and the difference is important. a discussion is where ideas meet and bounce off the participants and everybody benefits, while in a debate you usually start off with two people with fixed opinions in their heads, and end up with a "winner" and a "loser", each with the same fixed opinions in their heads

welcome to 4forums!

the best way to debate is to evalutate and study the style of your opponent and attack his weaknesses

I find that 'debating' helps me sharpen MY beliefs which is often more important than winning and losing...

I’m delighted to visit this thread after stretched time which was because of my exams. These types of sites always magnetize me.

101 datng ??????????