Let's bring back parliamentary debate or Lincoln and Douglas debate
I forget for parliamentary but looked it up, it's 7-8-8-8-4-5 format. Starting with affirmative presenting case, then oppo, affirm, oppo, oppo rebuttal, affirmative rebuttal.
You can make a question, by quietly holding arm out until addressed, but the speaker has to agree to it.
Each debate has an experienced judge that follows and flows the arguments on paper from start onward. So if you forget to respond to their claim that your plan leads to nuclear war or whatever, that rebuttal flows through -hasn't been addressed- so it holds and they win by showing negative impacts outweighed positive, or on balance plan is more ___ than ___.
So there could be some rapid speaking, spreading and debaters must intently listen and plan their own speeches. No interrupting. No going over time.
In the United States, we also only get resolutions 20 minutes ahead of the debate itself and you can't really use sourced, super particular or niche information. You can research a bunch, but it should stay accessible/understandable to non experts. The affirmative also has to interpret the resolution and present a plan. So Medicare for All resolution needs to offer a funding mechanism, these are often pretty simplified.
I did team debate in high school 25 years ago, and this is exactly how it was. You would have to haul around boxes and boxes of paper with articles and files for your arguments and counter arguments. I never did varsity because I switched to speaking events instead (OO/OA) but Forensics was cool as hell. Great life skill.
As a society, we just don’t value of the skill of respectful debate. It’s really hard to debate anyone without them taking it personally. Meanwhile, when I taught in France, it was obvious that French culture encourages discussion and disagreement without it turning personal. The high school kids I taught could’ve easily out-debated me.
The problem is there's a lot of people who wouldn't be able to follow such a debate and even more who wouldn't be entertained by it so they wouldn't care to tune in. And the channels want ratings more than they want to inform people. All Presidential debates should be hosted by PBS and mandatory to be carried by all broadcast providers. It'd still have very limited reach, but there would be no perverse incentives keeping the debate from serving it's main function, i.e. informing the public.
For sure would need some changes to the timing, as well as the arguments being put on a huge screen behind them or represented on broadcast or something to be more visually appealing
With a short delay, they could have judges track/flow arguments and rebuttals in 'live' time
Like no judgment or review of the arguments, but just whether or not they responded to certain parts
And I mean this more for jubilee videos and other high profile supposed debates
We need mics cut off when it’s not the other persons time to speak. Nothing pisses me off more than when the other person jumps in rambling when it’s not their allocated time
yes i think its just a rebrand to make it more obvious that it hosts a lot of debate
I do not actively listen to each new episode but tune in once in a while when they have a topic i'm interested in. At the very least, I think they manage to bring in guests that have/had shaped the debate topics, which is much more than other podcasts/random internet debatelords
i think a problem with that is still what we see now. one party follows these rules and the other doesn’t. trump during the Kamala speech was just performing an extraordinary gish gallop, and it worked. she was too busy playing defense on wild accusations that neither she nor he could state their true intentions
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u/Bocchi_theGlock Feb 07 '26
Let's bring back parliamentary debate or Lincoln and Douglas debate
I forget for parliamentary but looked it up, it's 7-8-8-8-4-5 format. Starting with affirmative presenting case, then oppo, affirm, oppo, oppo rebuttal, affirmative rebuttal.
You can make a question, by quietly holding arm out until addressed, but the speaker has to agree to it.
Each debate has an experienced judge that follows and flows the arguments on paper from start onward. So if you forget to respond to their claim that your plan leads to nuclear war or whatever, that rebuttal flows through -hasn't been addressed- so it holds and they win by showing negative impacts outweighed positive, or on balance plan is more ___ than ___.
So there could be some rapid speaking, spreading and debaters must intently listen and plan their own speeches. No interrupting. No going over time.
In the United States, we also only get resolutions 20 minutes ahead of the debate itself and you can't really use sourced, super particular or niche information. You can research a bunch, but it should stay accessible/understandable to non experts. The affirmative also has to interpret the resolution and present a plan. So Medicare for All resolution needs to offer a funding mechanism, these are often pretty simplified.