Clea Conner: America Needs More and Better Debates

The CEO of Open To Debate wants us to disagree more productively—especially when it comes to presidential debates.

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Clea Conner: America Needs More and Better Debates

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill wrote, "he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that." He was laying out the case for robust, good-faith, and systematic debate as essential to an open society. If you don't test your beliefs by engaging with people who disagree with you, you're more likely to make weak, incomplete, self-serving, or irrelevant arguments, leading to ruinous outcomes in policy matters or acrimonious misunderstandings in social life.

That's where the group Open to Debate comes in. Founded in 2006 as Intelligence Squared U.S., Open to Debate has hosted hundreds of debates with the goal of "restor[ing] critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse." Through a mix of online and in-person events, Open to Debate brings together artists, officials, public intellectuals, scientists, and entrepreneurs from across the ideological spectrum to work through contentious, heated, and seemingly irresolvable issues of the day.

Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward, for instance, was part of a debate that asked, "Is Capitalism a Blessing?" Over the years, I've argued for legalizing all drugs and against Medicare for All, net neutrality, and forgiving student loan debt. I also moderate debates for them, including one in New York about millennials taking place on June 7. Open to Debate invites audience participation, and it airs all its programming on public radio, YouTube, and the group's own website, where it provides voluminous notes and materials, all designed to help audience members reach independent and informed conclusions.

My guest today is Open To Debate's CEO, Clea Conner, who tells me about her group's mission, its name change, and its push to host actual presidential debates rather than "joint press conferences with really rehearsed talking points."

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Comments

[Stuck in California]

Would.

[A Cynical Asshole]

Wood.

[Ersatz]

Ha! I was thinking I'd see a couple of these when I saw the accompanying photo

[The Margrave of Azilia]

A whole hour? Where’s the transcript?

UPDATE: Maybe this is it:

https://reason.com/2023/04/11/why-america-needs-to-be-open-to-debate/

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Maybe. But there's this at the bottom of that: "This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity."

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Well, close enough for government work.

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[Don't look at me!]

I’m told the best debaters mute those with opposing views.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

If someone has an opposing view, that's violence and you should hurl a brick at them.

[A Cynical Asshole]

Also, if someone's not saying anything, hurl a brick at them. Because "silence is violence" too.

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[chemjeff radical individualist]

Really? Who would that be?

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Don’t worry, only the right people are allowed to do that.

[mad.casual]

I was kinda surprised she came to Reason “Police should subdue assailants without using force, only de-escalation techniques that are to everyone’s liking.”/”Ted Cruz Comes Out Against Liberal Democratic Values” Magazine to talk about debating more productively.

[Bill Falcon]

go to their website...far left grifters like the lincoln project pretending to be non-partisan

[A Cynical Asshole]

My guest today is Open To Debate's CEO, Clea Conner, who tells me about her group's mission, its name change, and its push to host actual presidential debates

Why not just go ahead and host a debate then and invite any presidential candidate with ballot access in enough states that they could, mathematically, at least in theory win (only because you have to draw a line somewhere as far as who's invited)? That would include the Republican and Democratic party candidates - of course they wouldn't show up - but they could still hold some sort of debate with whoever else is eligible.

IOW, don't wait and don't ask the current gate keepers for permission, and just do it anyway.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Sure, and why not invite qualified write-in candidates, too, if they have access to a majority of electoral votes? This is a literate country, after all - people can write a name. Strom Thurmond got elected to the Senate with write-ins.

And as for the problem of the empty Dem and Rep chairs, if the actual candidates don't show up, invite some ambitious journalist/blogger/podcaster from each party and ask them to give the case for their candidate. They would have a hard time turning down the free publicity and extra attention to their brand.

[Overt]

Why not just host the debate and care fuck-all about who comes?

The great thing about most debates is that you can objectively score them as well as subject them to polling and the like. You can also enforce specific rules, such as when you are allowed to bring in new evidence, versus cross examine or whatever. Some of my best time in my early years was in Cross X and LD debate. I learned a lot about viewing both sides of the issue, and thinking about the structure of arguments.

You don't need Distinguished People to have a platform for debate. What you need is a commitment to transparent and fair rules. You will then be shocked by the folks who come out of the woodwork capable of great ideas.

[Stuck in California]

Why not just host the debate and care fuck-all about who comes?

Just pure numbers, really.

Probably 150 million Americans over 35. If you have an anyone available free for all you might just get more voices than a debate can have. Then you end up with a giant cluserfuck of people yelling at each other, trolling, and sealioning to derail any serious discussion. And you know organizations that exist to just fuck things up, like Open Societies, will sponsor plenty of trolls.

We already have an internet. For a “debate” you need serious debaters.

[Overt]

"Then you end up with a giant cluserfuck of people yelling at each other, trolling, and sealioning to derail any serious discussion. "

I don't see any indication that when you curate speakers you get anything better. Look at Opinion Columns and Presidential Debates today. They are full of exactly the same emoting, derailing, dissembling and trolling.

But. YouTube and other sites show that people will raise to the top. I am arguing that a platform that lets people self organize or randomly matches them in debates would not be measurably worse. Sure, you'd get utter shit, but that could easily be filtered out. Use debate scoring rules (which are argument agnostic, and just focus on whether you are using sound logic to counter arguments), and crowd source things like fact checks.

I don't see this as a panacea. But I do think it will be better than we have today where an Ivy League club of elitist children try to foist their fallacious arguments on us and call them enlightened.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Your last paragraph is good.
But some things , if you debate them, you legitimize them : Sexual perversion, Holocaust denial, etc.
And if you have debate experience you know that a person more devoted to opposing the other side than defending anything positive will end up with the scepticism argument "Well, who really knows?"
A good debate has at least 3 characteristics.
1) Both sides are defending a positive stance
2) BOth sides accept LOGOS, that the world is reasonable. Now you can accept that something is not provable but not that it is irrational.
3) No posturing. Hard to prove but very common .
Charles Sanders Peirce — 'Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.'
In other words , don't tell me perverted sex is okay and then I hear you killed some pervert who had your daughter's permission etc.

And as an addendum throw out all Science-groupies who think peer-review or falsifiability is working. The great scientist is utterly correct (as all my fellow science lab students will affirm) when he points out these 2 facts
A) a series of observations which at one time were held to be important scientific facts, were a few years later completely discredited and committed to oblivion, without ever having been disproved or indeed newly tested, simply because the conceptual framework of science had meanwhile so altered that the facts no longer appeared credible.
B)The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing.
Michael Polanyi

[Dillinger]

how to debate Clea Conner without getting lost in those baby blues?

[A Cynical Asshole]

Probably not possible.

[mad.casual]

Arguing in the affirmative: Long dark brown ombre curls.

[Super Scary]

Maybe they should convert political debates to the more modern form of debate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FPsEwWT6K0&ab_channel=WIRED

[SRG]

Or they could have debates like here.

DeSantis: I'd like to open by noting that Biden is a pedophile

Biden: oh yeah? You're just another Trump sock

DeSantis: am not, I am much too coherent, unlike you. You're the sock. And you're backed by Soros

Biden: So you're an antisemite as well.

DeSantis: that's ridiculous. Plenty of Jews have backed my campaign. And how about that video of you sniffing the girl's hair?

Biden:

Moderator: Mr Biden?

Biden: Sorry, I just muted DeSantis. What did he say?

[Super Scary]

It’ll only be like here if Biden calls Trump a bitter clinger and Trump accuses Biden of being Shrike (I still don’t know who that actually is).

[Dillinger]

the muted thing is funny.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

the people keep choosing those two teams, so that is the level of discourse that they deserve.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

And being a liar, you deny being on a team.

[Don't look at me!]

chemjeff radical individualist 2 hours ago
Flag Comment Mute User

Really? Who would that be?

[Longtobefree]

Not gonna happen.
Debates require facts, and citations, and respect for your opponent.
None of that is OK in the world of politics.

[JFree]

Maybe they should stop with the the whole top-down mindset. A big debate question of national/global importance - with 'big names' - where people are supposed to watch it on TV or social media. It's insanity to believe that that approach is gonna do a damn thing except increase polarization because it just encourages passivity.

There might be a very interesting role for live events that are far more locally driven. Maybe a combination of Toastmasters, TedX, and Great Books discussion groups.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Too many people are bowling alone to attend, if you catch my drift.

[JFree]

That's what needs to be reversed.

Yeah I suspect attendance might be very low to start. And maybe not many cities either. But I doubt that's the real hurdle. The real hurdle is local hosts/organizers who don't know what to do, or what kinds of debate format even exist, or how to market, or where to find a willing venue that would welcome any gathering that might get them business.

That's where something already centrally organized can help. A seed that can be planted elsewhere.

[mad.casual]

I put, assuming "productive" is taken in any way earnestly, the odds of at least one debate getting shouted down close to one. The odds of the debate or a particular view being rejected by hosts/organizers north of that. Since ancient times, save a brief stint over whether Miller Lite tastes great or is less filling, debates have been an academic/public square endeavor, not a commercial one.

Maybe you could convince advertising execs to do it through some sort of semi-closed, social media platform, focus group testing, so that the Bud Lights of the world can figure out how terrible of an idea being name-adjacent to the Dylan Mulvaney side of the debate is beforehand, but I still don't think you're going to approach the popularity of something like TedX. This may already be done and just a) generally not disclosed or meaningfully compiled and b) largely ignored because at least one side of many debates clearly gives precisely zero shits whether their customers like their political causes or not, even going so far as to frequently and clearly say so.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Then go further and see that that means we have to get them to attend

“People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism.”
― Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

[Bill Falcon]

I visited their website...the usual suspects grifting on "need to get past all the partianship" bs. Their bios give it away...live in NYC, went to far left private colleges (Oberlin, Hunter, NYU), worked at PBS, Bloomberg...JC Nick really? Didn't see one that went to a state school, majored in something not marxist...no hard science, engineering, or even business. Just the same same cosmo lefties Nick likes to suck up to.

Gene Epstein should stop any association with Reason..

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Yet those people can be handed their asss and that is great in front of a teachable audience.

You do the following things
You expose their multiple conflicting allegiances.
You try to get to their alledge 'First Principles'
You get them to admit that moral questions are subject to rationality if not restricted to it.

[MWAocdoc]

The problem with this is that, while the responsible adults are carefully considering and debating the issues, researching reliable evidence and applying logic and fundamental principles to their opinions, the children in the next room are tearing around wildly, breaking the vases, passing and signing bills into law, playing with matches, burning the house down, spending money they don’t have on pork, and imposing executive orders that go into effect immediately and last for a couple of years until the courts finally get around to nullifying them, way after it’s way too late. To paraphrase the old saw: “The Statists spread grief around the world while the Constitution is still putting its boots on.”

[BigT]

Certainly not the Donkeys. They are planning a substantial series of debates during the upcoming Presidential campaign.

Oh, wait……

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