What is a Debate?
An argument is two people trying to win. A debate is two people trying to find out which position survives contact with the other one. They look identical from the outside and they are not the same activity at all.
The difference is what counts as a good move. In an argument, anything that makes the other person stop talking works. In a debate, only reasons work — and a reason that would not persuade a fair stranger is not doing anything, however satisfying it felt to type.
The one rule underneath everything here
You judge who argued better, not who you agreed with.
This is harder than it sounds and it is the whole game. Most people, asked who won a debate, report who they already agreed with before it started. That is not judging. That is a headcount taken twice.
The question to ask yourself is narrower and more useful: which of these two answered the other one? A person can be right and argue badly. A person can be wrong and argue well. Both happen constantly, and noticing the difference is a skill you can build — it is most of what this section is for.
There is a good test for it. If you have never once judged a debate in favour of a position you disagree with, you are not judging debates.
Two places to argue
Current Events
Open. No format, no clock, no end. Anybody who has taken a seat can speak, and the discussion stays open as long as people keep coming back to it.
Most of what happens on this site happens here.
The Arena
Formal. Two people, turns, a clock, and an ending. Nobody can talk over anyone because it is not possible to speak out of turn. The audience watches and votes at the end.
Facing one person alone is a different nerve. Plenty of good arguers never do it, and that is fine.
The four seats
Every discussion is one yes-or-no question, and there are four places to sit. Two of them are the obvious ones. The other two are the reason this works at all.
- Yes and No
- The answer is one or the other. You may explain why and you do not have to.
- Both
- Both sides are right about something. To sit here you must say what each side gets right — not one of them, both.
- Neither
- Both sides are wrong. To sit here you must say what each side gets wrong — again, both.
Standing above an argument is the most comfortable place to stand and the cheapest thing to say. So Both and Neither cost something: you have to show your work about two positions instead of one. If you can do that, those are the most valuable seats in the room. If you cannot, you did not have a third position — you had a way of avoiding the question.
You sit somewhere before you speak
There is no commenting from outside. Saying where you stand first is the entire difference between this and a comment section, and it costs you nothing you were not already thinking.
And you can move. As often as you like, whenever the argument moves you. Every move is kept and shown, not to embarrass anybody but because changing your mind on evidence is the rarest good thing that happens in a discussion, and hiding it would be strange. Comments keep the seat you held when you wrote them, so an old comment still reads as what it was.
What comes next
Claims & Evidence is about what actually supports a point. Bad Arguments is the list of moves that look like support and are not — read it and you can name them on other people’s comments. Argue Better is preparation and tactics. The Final Exam is the gate to the Arena, and it is mostly about judging: which argument was better, not which one you liked.