“Debate” as a sport is one of the most degenerate sports there is. I say this as a former participant in the sport, having done quite well for a first-timer, but quickly realizing how vapid and masturbatory the entire field is.

“Debate” as a sport is the act if arguing for or against a point and the person who is most convincing to a judge wins. You are assigned a topic and are told that you must defend it to your best ability. You usually are given some time before to prepare a defense, all without knowing the other side’s argument. In my time in debate club, this was usually 30 minutes, always ensuring that the topics at hand could never have any depth.

The nature of topics selected were never legal matters as well, as the debate club is not the “mock law” club, which would have at least had utility for public good. Instead, they were usually topical social issues related to banal subjects: Abortion, church taxation, green energy, etc.

Debate as a sport is just a modern form of what Plato lampooned as Sophistry, a slur for paid academics who argued on topics in the pursuit of success in convincing, not the value of truth.

The types of people coming from this group tend to be high in charisma, but not necessarily high in intellectual ability, or more importantly, moral orientation towards finding truth. In the best case scenario, they become lawyers, fighting for their clients as a way of preserving an impartial court system by steel-manning a case to an impartial judge. In the worst case scenario, these people have desires for changing the world, using the talent of a silver tongue to get their way, often trading wisdom and ability for raw rhetorical pull, making them evil state-crafters, not orientated towards the good of their constituents.

The Debate Fallacy

The debate bro as a character preys upon the naive and moral’s assumption of truth orientation in their opponent during intellectual pursuits. While a good man will attempt to steel-man an argument that their opponent makes to bring it up to the highest standard possible, a Debate bro will see any bit of sloppy thinking or mistake as a way to tear their opponent down in the name of winning.

Furthermore, the debate bro tends to not be consistent when it comes to intellectual pursuits. With one opponent, they will argue for A, and then for another they will argue for B, this is even if B has an implicit, but not overt, contradiction with A. This is also how debate bros can generally live in intellectual camps, for example a leftist debate bro can talk endlessly about the evils of capitalism, but demand a fascist be taken down by those same powers. Alternatively, a religious zealot seething about free speech when their ability to evangelize is hindered while also stamping down on homosexuality information. Both are not consistent in their beliefs and are merely saying words in the pursuit of their own interests.

This “words in my interest” behavior is only for them and not for you though. If you realize that they’re acting dishonestly and refuse to engage, you will be heckled endlessly about intellectual dishonesty, all while they merely argue and rationalize their own self interests. These types love to argue people out of their own self-interests to totally “pwn” them on the debate floor, making their interests look foolish and idiotic and that anyone with them should be shunned as idiots.

A particularly vile example of this is the argument around abortion. Most people get into the weeds of what is and isn’t a human, but the ultimate divide really comes down to a suppression or tolerance of anti-natal policy. Both the abortionist and anti-abortionist agree that the act of abortion is the termination of potential life and the responsibility that lies there in to provide for such life. However, merely stating “I do not want to live in a society where people kill their children since it is against my interest as a human to promote anti-natal behavior” will get you labeled as a moralizing emotionalist who does not want to engage in intellectual pursuit.

You can’t argue against values.

This section may become its own article in itself, but western culture has a obsession with consciousness and rationality as the ultimate good rather than as a mere aspect of the self, so much so that they believe that you can rationally argue against your own genetic and cultural background in a detached, omnipotent, and machine-like fashion.

While it is possible for people to act against their own self-interests, the ultimate point of human life, and all life generally, is for the replication of the self which is information codified in our genome. Furthermore, out cultural imprinting acts as a form of mental pattern and genome that we often pass to our children as well, regardless of if it is the most optimal or perfect set of behaviors.

Values exist in relation to both of these repeated patterns: What is good for your ability to reproduce your mental and genetic pattern is going to be valuable to you. This is especially true of your strongest traits. If religion has been inter-generationally important to you and serves as the bedrock of how your family has historically operated, then the replication of that religion will be a higher priority than the replication of a specific taste in music. Similarly, if intellectual ability is what over time blesses your family with its ability to reproduce, it will compound and persist over time as superfluous traits are traded out in the usual sexual selection.

No part of this process involves consulting a rational rule book on the subject, its a process that exists external to the self and does not answer to the debates or reasoning of any debate bro. Your own self-interest in a genetic and cultural sense must triumph over the arguments of a sophist.

We do have the ability to pursue truth as truth is a very powerful tool. Using true information, we have been able to perfect and refine our state of being, first with the perfection of agriculture and then with the process of industrialization. Through time the pursuit of truth has brought us more ability and thus is a ritual we must defend as integral to our beings, however, we must understand that truth is a tool that we use for our own benefit and that others will disrespect it for their own gain as well.