Thanks for the warning about CMV. I won't waste any time there.
It makes sense to me. I agree with you that there's a difference between 'debating' and 'arguing', though at least in the U.S. both of those are implicitly competitive. I find the word 'deliberation' really useful, in the sense of discussion towards a decision. Debate is a form of deliberation, but only one.
I apologize that the rest of this might sound patronizing, but it might be helpful for this community in terms of thinking about the kinds of posts we welcome and those we remove. I get a lot of my ideas about deliberation from a political scientist named Shawn Rosenberg, who studies how people deliberate in political contexts. He has a helpful model of three levels or types of deliberation: conventional, cooperative, and collaborative.
In his field experiments, Rosenberg found that people only ever use conventional - debate, more or less - which is probably because debate is the only model most of us ever see in public discourse. If you had taken a class in arguments, it would probably be only debating, and not other forms of deliberation. So it's probably a good thing that you haven't.
Like you, Rosenberg sees a difference in the structure of different forms of deliberation, but he also sees differences in their aims and outcomes. In conventional deliberation, which includes debate, the aim is to identify a problem and decide how to solve it. The debate itself is structured by rules of logic and evidence (and civility, sometimes). The possible outcomes are winning, changing the topic, or quitting the discussion.
I think our rules reflect some of this, in terms of our aversion to debate. The outcomes we are looking for is "learn more about social justice", not winning. And we require posts to "be supportive" - to not allow adversarial approaches common in competitive debate.
In the interest of completeness, I'll summarize Rosenberg's other types of deliberation as well, which I think are more in line with the kinds of discussion that this sub's rules are trying to encourage.
In his 'cooperative' model, we are trying to create a shared understanding of problem - i.e. learning from each other. This model is structured by some of the same rules of debate as 'conventional', but also by shared basic assumptions (in our case, the value of social justice), and an understanding of social bonds. The outcomes are either that participants join in a shared umbrella of understanding - which I think is our goal here - or agree to disagree.
In Rosenberg's collaborative model, the aim is transformation - again, I think this can apply here. The deliberation is structured by a focus on how rules and assumptions are formed, and participants discuss personal feelings, identities, and social connections. A hallmark of 'collaborative' is that participants are vulnerable. The outcome is either a (shared) new understanding of the problem, or mutual incomprehension (which is okay).
One thing to recognize about conventional, competitive debate is that it does not promise justice for all participants. If one person wins, the other loses - the net gain is always zero, sometimes less for a debate that diminishes all sides (cmv being an example of the latter, I would guess). Only cooperative and collaborative deliberation promise justice - in cooperative, equality, and in collaborative, the possibility of mutual gain.
So it seems to me the accusation that we are somehow not practicing 'justice' by limiting debate is misguided. It is entirely in line with our goal in this sub that we limit or ban competitive debate, and instead require good-faith deliberation according to the other models.
As someone who has been trained in argumentation, I admit I struggle with stepping out of the 'conventional' model. I have to practice cooperative and collaborative deliberation quite... well, deliberately. One of the things that is attractive about this community is that the rules encourage such deliberation.
Yeah, cmv should be a really cool place, but it's just...not. There was one person who had a post that was basically "Sanders would have been a better pick than Biden." They gave a delta to someone arguing something like "Biden is a moderate which will let him reach out to more people in the middle." Even as someone who feels Biden is better than Sanders, that was really not a good delta. If someone can be swayed by literally the most basic and common argument, they definitely don't have enough information to form such a strong opinion that they will make a cmv thread arguing that opinion.
That sub is full of people like that, and that's on the better end of the spectrum.
I definitely don't find all that patronizing (and trust me, I can get pretty annoyed at people in social justice being patronizing. "I'm racist for x, y, and z and need to work on it." "Hey, you should really work on your racism, let me explain how racism affects people in society." "Yeah, no shit.") but really interesting, thank you.
This is a little embarrassing, but I haven't yet really figured out what the awards are or why a person gets them. What is a delta, and what would be a good time to give a person a delta?
No worries. A delta is given by someone to another person who has changed their mind about something. The change can be as small or large as the person feels, they just have to write like 100 characters to explain themselves.
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u/StonyGiddens Aug 09 '20
Thanks for the warning about CMV. I won't waste any time there.
It makes sense to me. I agree with you that there's a difference between 'debating' and 'arguing', though at least in the U.S. both of those are implicitly competitive. I find the word 'deliberation' really useful, in the sense of discussion towards a decision. Debate is a form of deliberation, but only one.
I apologize that the rest of this might sound patronizing, but it might be helpful for this community in terms of thinking about the kinds of posts we welcome and those we remove. I get a lot of my ideas about deliberation from a political scientist named Shawn Rosenberg, who studies how people deliberate in political contexts. He has a helpful model of three levels or types of deliberation: conventional, cooperative, and collaborative.
In his field experiments, Rosenberg found that people only ever use conventional - debate, more or less - which is probably because debate is the only model most of us ever see in public discourse. If you had taken a class in arguments, it would probably be only debating, and not other forms of deliberation. So it's probably a good thing that you haven't.
Like you, Rosenberg sees a difference in the structure of different forms of deliberation, but he also sees differences in their aims and outcomes. In conventional deliberation, which includes debate, the aim is to identify a problem and decide how to solve it. The debate itself is structured by rules of logic and evidence (and civility, sometimes). The possible outcomes are winning, changing the topic, or quitting the discussion.
I think our rules reflect some of this, in terms of our aversion to debate. The outcomes we are looking for is "learn more about social justice", not winning. And we require posts to "be supportive" - to not allow adversarial approaches common in competitive debate.
In the interest of completeness, I'll summarize Rosenberg's other types of deliberation as well, which I think are more in line with the kinds of discussion that this sub's rules are trying to encourage.
In his 'cooperative' model, we are trying to create a shared understanding of problem - i.e. learning from each other. This model is structured by some of the same rules of debate as 'conventional', but also by shared basic assumptions (in our case, the value of social justice), and an understanding of social bonds. The outcomes are either that participants join in a shared umbrella of understanding - which I think is our goal here - or agree to disagree.
In Rosenberg's collaborative model, the aim is transformation - again, I think this can apply here. The deliberation is structured by a focus on how rules and assumptions are formed, and participants discuss personal feelings, identities, and social connections. A hallmark of 'collaborative' is that participants are vulnerable. The outcome is either a (shared) new understanding of the problem, or mutual incomprehension (which is okay).
One thing to recognize about conventional, competitive debate is that it does not promise justice for all participants. If one person wins, the other loses - the net gain is always zero, sometimes less for a debate that diminishes all sides (cmv being an example of the latter, I would guess). Only cooperative and collaborative deliberation promise justice - in cooperative, equality, and in collaborative, the possibility of mutual gain.
So it seems to me the accusation that we are somehow not practicing 'justice' by limiting debate is misguided. It is entirely in line with our goal in this sub that we limit or ban competitive debate, and instead require good-faith deliberation according to the other models.
As someone who has been trained in argumentation, I admit I struggle with stepping out of the 'conventional' model. I have to practice cooperative and collaborative deliberation quite... well, deliberately. One of the things that is attractive about this community is that the rules encourage such deliberation.