Class today covered fallacies and how to spot them, which is a great way to make somebody feel like an idiot during a debate. But spotting a fallacy doesn’t mean you just demolished somebody’s argument like Mike Tyson demolished that dude who killed his pigeons. Somebody can have a very valid point he or she is trying to make but by fallacious argumentation. It’s a slippery slope (oh no I didn’t) to assume that somebody is incapable of being right because their way of reasoning is shortsighted.
I do it myself all the time, I call bullshit as soon as I even smell the tiniest flaw in ones reasoning but the thing is I don’t speak it out until I’ve had a good thought about what they’re trying to say. You have to take a step back and look at the big picture to not get stuck in a vicious cycle of your own reasoning. It’s the nature of the debating game, the clock is ticking so you rattle away at your opponent explaining your point of view until the buzzer goes and it is your opponents turn to react. And that brings me to the only thing I don’t like about debating.
Debating is often used to settle disputes or more publicly win over voters during elections. A certain timespan in which debaters have certain amount of time to open fire upon their opponent, unleash a flurry of linguistic bullets designed to win over public opinion rather than having an exchange of intellectual theories and ideologies, things society should focus on instead of why candidate number 18 is incapable of making important decisions. And how entertaining they may be, I for one can’t believe that in this day and age we expect somebody to explain how they want to change the world for the better in under two minutes only to begin a white collar bitch-fight over each other’s argumentation, past or even place of birth (seriously Donald that was some grade A crazy-talk).
It’s important to examine one’s point as much as it is to examine their way of reasoning and the way they construct their arguments and there is no shame in taking your time to do so. Next time you’re having a deep philosophical debate with a friend over a nice cold beer just take another zip before you reply to what he or she just said instead of inevitably making somebody look like a fool.
The Rational Mindset 