Isn't it awfully ...

[Tessa K]

Explorer. Sometimes it's caused when someone posts a long link. It has been pointed out to me that my technology is a little antiquated. It's no big deal.

[Nettles]

There's a lot to be said for debating for the sake of debating IF

the people you're debating with are also debating for the sake of debating, and IF nobody involved has a great deal emotionally invested in the debate.

I imagine (reaching back to the subforum title) it would be fun and interesting to run a debate in the pub.

[Max]

Oooo good idea!

[Tessa K]

There's a lot to be said for debating for the sake of debating IF

the people you're debating with are also debating for the sake of debating, and IF nobody involved has a great deal emotionally invested in the debate.

I imagine (reaching back to the subforum title) it would be fun and interesting to run a debate in the pub.

I agree, there has to be an even playing field, otherwise it turns into point-scoring.

I wonder what subject would be good for debate? No point having something everyone agrees on. Maybe a non-science debate that people didn't need specialist knowledge for. Maybe even a non-serious subject.

[Max]

How about Scepticism is Beneficial for Society?

[Tessa K]

This house proposes that chocolate is the root of all evil

[Max]

No gender-based debates

[Janet W]

Please ignore my comment above about Xian forum, which I hadn't spent much time exploring.. my mate RufusRuff has been exploring and has concluded they are not people we'd want to spend time with.

All the Skeptics meetings seem to have a debating element (principally between Nick and Dave, who are very entertaining debaters), but yes a formal debate might be quite fun.

[Janet W]

(my suggestion to Nick that Max and Tessa present a talk on Post-Modernism seems not to have been taken up...)

[Max]

Tessa is more of an expert than me so I politely declined. I'm afraid my knowledge is limited to the non-skeptical subjects of scientific method, statistics, and psychology. Everything else is just personal opinion without much evidence to support it.

[Nettles]

I suppose the thing to do is find an issue that most skeptics don't know much about, but where there is an open issue with evidence to be examined, yet where expert knowledge is reasonably transparent. I mean, you'd hate to be sitting there while a couple of experts played table-tennis with references:

"Shay says that it's the violation of menis which creates battle fatigue, and the restoration of menis in the primary group environment that permits recovery."

"Ah, but Shay was discredited after his evidence was found to be based on too small a sample."

"Oho, but the sample base for this wasn't the same as the sample base for that."

I mean, that's real sleeper territory.

The chocolate one sounds good to me ... and you can rent those chocolate fondue fountains for empirical testing ...

[Max]

I kid you not - one of the early meetings featured a guy who led us through research discrediting astrology. All of it. From 1850. I was personally convinced by 1852. But had to stay until 1999 (the date of the meeting).

[Tessa K]

I know that chocolate might sound a bit trivial, but I was trying to think of a subject in which no one at the group would have a personal, emotional investment or belief, and also a subject that required little expert knowledge. Anyone can look up a few choco-facts online, for example.

That way, it would be a purely impersonal debate and might also sharpen our debating skills for more serious debates at a later date.

[Tessa K]

It's been pointed out to me that chocolate would split the debate along gender lines. But it was only an example.

[Nettles]

It's been pointed out to me that chocolate would split the debate along gender lines.

Ah, but would it?

We wouldn't know until we took the vote.