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Comment by loughnane | Hacker News Reader

The sad irony is that he's at a college campus debating/arguing with people. At their best that's what college campuses are for. I know they haven't been living up to it lately but seeing him gunned down feels like a metaphor.

I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.

That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?

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Feels like your second paragraph negates the first. That he wasn’t honestly debating ideas but fishing for soundbites to spread hate and appear intellectual, using the backdrop of college campuses to lend legitimacy to his divisive ideas. That is not what college campuses are for, and it is not a debate.

I’m not American, I never heard of this guy before. But I saw the video of the last moments and it’s a telling snippet. He was incredibly dismissive in his answers which were vague and devoid of information, while being clearly rage bait meant to be cheered on by his base.

As I've said in a few other comments, I agree it's a poor "debate". But sadly it's the sort we've got now in the public sphere. I hope for better, but I can't help but think his killing doesn't help.

>But sadly it's the sort we've got now in the public sphere.

Why can't we strive for a proper environment and expel those who don't want to foster it? Schools are not entitled to give "equal platform" to unequal ideas.

What is an “unequal” idea?

They pretty clearly meant "ideas", plural, which are pairwise not equal to each other in some metric (presumably,merit).

He didn't deserve to die but I don't like how racist rhetoric somehow became honest political discussion. The elevation of racist ideology to being just another political opinion deserving of respect worries me.

> I don't like how racist rhetoric somehow became honest political discussion.

It didn't.

> The elevation of racist ideology to being just another political opinion deserving of respect

This has not occurred.

This is also irrelevant, because Kirk has not made racist claims.

To dismiss him as being “devoid of information” is lazy and cheap. He had scholars on his team shape his message.

“Scholars”

> That he wasn’t honestly debating ideas but fishing for soundbites to spread hate and appear intellectual

I'm not convinced political debates are good for anything else. Most people believe in things without really thinking about them. Especially politics.

If you stop and actually reason this stuff out, you're going to reach some deeply disturbing conclusions which border on wrongthink. If you try to spread the nuggets of truth you discovered, you just fail miserably at first. People will not be convinced.

They probably won't really refute you either. Maybe it's because you're right, maybe it's because they didn't even think about what you said and just responded emotionally, there's no way to know for sure because trying to test ideas in debates just doesn't work with the vast majority of human beings.

If you insist on this path, people start thinking you're acting superior to them with your unconventional ideas. At some point you start getting flagged and downvoted on sight. Then you start getting personally called out. Labeled as some "extremist". Maybe one day you become such a nuisance authorities actually knock on your door and arrest you. Maybe your ideas offend someone so much they assassinate you.

So I don't blame this guy at all for debating like a politician. If he debated seriously and won, would his opponents revise their entire belief systems and start following his logical footsteps? Of course not.

It is a performance that appears as a debate.

Is that relevant? Could be said about any public debate or speaker.

Of course it couldn't. Go and compare these two. You may as well compare fruit loops to wagyu beef.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAqMIZdX5g ("Charlie Kirk Hands Out L's")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVQ3l5P0A4 ("Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Power vs Justice")

Charlie Kirk was a 30 year old political activist. You pick the finest minds of the last century, a famous debate between them, and somehow compare that to Kirk advocating whatever he advocates. It's like comparing a middle school math teacher against a college math teacher (professor) and their teaching styles.

It is like comparing a mediocre magician who is ok at giving an illusion of a debate that gets a reaction from an audience vs people who give thought provoking points.

A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".

The whole point is you either answer A) no, and get a reaction from the audience for looking bad cause hitler or B) yes, and now you have conceded.

It amounts to a party trick.

[flagged]

What part of trying to corner you using the reaction of the audience the moment you argue against objective morality the Socratic method? Obviously no one wants to appear as a Nazi sympathiser especially in public when that is not the point they are trying to make.

If he fails to corner you, then comes the escape hatch where he brings up God and how God defines morality. Now the debate is over because you either believe in God or you don't.

This is a script that turns the whole thing into a rigged game not a method for arguing.

The problem in his argument is not that there is objective morality. It's that whatever strain of Christianity he belongs to today is the source of objective morality.

> What part is the Socratic method?

This part:

> A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".

> B) yes, and now you have conceded.

Yes, it makes the person look silly because the only answer that seems correct is yes, because there is obviously objective evil.

If objective morals exist then what is objectively moral when it comes to abortion? Which choice is wrong and which is right? What makes it "objective"? Why did the Germans not all think that Hitler was "objectively evil" even though to us it seems obvious?

> If objective morals exist then what is objectively moral when it comes to abortion?

You don’t understand the discussion. Kirk is saying objectively morality exists. We can all agree that murdering a one month old child is objectively immoral. Not that all situations are objectively moral or immoral.

Your emotions on what feels obvious are not an argument for objective morality. Trying to use the audience to corner someone is not debating. The person in the video themselves answered A) no, which then led to the whole script about Charlie's beliefs of God and how God defines morality.

You yourself seem to be the one trying to bend what objective morality means by claiming it only applies sometimes.

If it were so obvious it would not be something worth debating in the first place which has been debated far better by far greater people. This is not a novel topic.

> Trying to use the audience to corner someone is not debating.

No but having the student admit objective morality exists is debating. You know this. I know you know this. You know the audience reaction is to the person losing the point too. You know you are being deceitful pretending the audience reaction is the debating technique not the actual technique that caused the reaction. I know you are being deceitful too. Stop posting, go outside.

That's not the trick here. The trick is that the format of his talks - and the typical lack of preparation on the part of the typical college student - prohibits nuanced answers.

The correct answer there (to someone who, unlike me, does not believe in objective morality) is something like "I oppose everything Hitler did and stood for. Notwithstanding that, your question is incoherent." What unprepared 20 year old comes up with that on the spot? Much less be prepared to back it up, only in sound bites (because that's what works in the format)?

Your comment seems to imply that Kirk was simply not as good at holding a good-faith debate as the "finest minds".

It's not a question of skill or aptitude, but rather that he actively sought performative "owning the libs" arguments than genuine rigorous intellectual debate.

Kirk's operation was about giving bullying lessons (read: Republican talking points) to Young Republicans

The point of his videos is to teach Young Republicans to identify weaker, more easily targeted members of the liberal tribe, alongside a set of disingenous talking points they could use to harass and ideally embarass those individuals.

The Chomsky-Ali G debate is also worth watching. For other reasons perhaps.

There are better and worse debates but I question the validity of an argument about the quality of debates of someone who likely got shot for a political argument.

At least his argument seemed to hit some spot. (I don't know a single one, didn't even know the victim).

Getting killed over politics is not an index for "debate" quality. Giving someone such credit because they died is nonsense.

Are you expecting that all debates reach the level of a Chomsky-Foucault debate and to discard anyone below it?

Are you even able to meet that level yourself? This is non-sense. Obviously we all would love to reach that level of knowledge, introspection and speaking capability of Chomsky/Foucault, but it is absurd to expect it at all times.

It is not just about quality but how they are fundamentally different. One appears to be a debate the other is a debate. The person who got flagged made the same point which I responded to.

Yes when one political party is using his death as an opportunity to manufacture a martyr for free speech. If they are going to say, "we need more people like him," then we are right to critically assess who he was.

I agree with that. As I said elsewhere it's a shame that we don't get better.

If you compare it with the more sober, reflectful sort (eg russell vs copleston on the existence of God [0]) you can see how far we've fallen.

Nevertheless, his killing I think will make us slide even further.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpADrtr85iM&pp=ygUlYmVydHJhb...

Sure. Our own mainstream media is very guilty of doing the same things with regard to editing down reality for the sakes of entertainment or pushing an agenda. I guess one admirable difference, to offer him some defence, is he is an appproachable guy. Literally. If you so disired you could go and view his debates or even debate him yourself. He has the right to make himself look good on his own channel.

He was only approachable as long as you were feeding him content. Turn the cameras off and the "debate" is over. It was a strictly transactional exchange in his favour.

>Turn the cameras off and the "debate" is over. It was a strictly transactional exchange in his favour.

Are you claiming Kirk was just shilling, as was imagined about Ann Coulter[0]? (Very NSFW).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP_12j-sPO4

Every debate is a performance, so of course it was.

Not true. You can debate in private in a way where two people are searching for truth.

The sad thing is if people debate like it’s a performance when it’s not.

Not really.

I read an account of the "debate" immediately preceding his murder, it was quips and dodges. If that's at all representative of his conduct, he actively hurt the national dialogue by convincing people that that's what a debate looks like.

how would you steelman his position?

I wouldn't. It's a position selected specifically to troll immature leftist college students and score youtube views.

Steelmanning that position, though, would go like this. The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Good debate makes good viewing, which is why debates have audiences. And young people in particular tend to be impressionable because they don't have a lifetime of commitment to one position.

So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.

> The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind.

Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn.

Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing).

Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together.

One could say the same about this very debate you're participating in. And since that's how you see debates, one has to immediately assume that you're not acting in good faith.

Only a small subset of conversations are debates, and personally I don't feel like I'm arguing with anyone (including you!), just discussing

Debates SHOULD be about 2 parties seeking truth. In reality, it's about brining people over to your viewpoint and garnering support.

There's many ways to do that, but centuries of debate etiquette describe bad form and dishonest means to "win a debate". Despite the events here, it is generally bad form in an exchange of words to incite violence against an opponent. And that's often what Kirk does, or did.

>Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging

Yes. Before we sigsrcoated it, we just called this propaganda. Propaganda is not a debate. The most dangerous discovery in early social media was that a spewing of propaganda (aka, arguments not all based on reason nor a goal to further humanity) will still get you a following, no matter how badly you use. Becsuse saying those words rouse the thoughts of those who are either prone to propaganda, or simply embolden those who already had those thoughts but werre too scared to admit it.

A decade of refinement later, and look where we are.

A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms.

I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."

He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy)

Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable

I'm comfortable saying both that charlie kirk was a loathsome hatemonger and that he also shouldn't have been murdered. This hurts everyone.

I agree wholeheartedly.

He absolutely shouldn't have been murdered and the rise of political violence is terrifying for the country's future.

However, he has directly stated that empathy is bad and that shooting victims are an acceptable price to pay to avoid gun control.

I refuse to feel sympathy for someone who vigorously argued against doing anything to prevent what happened to him and who vigorously argued against caring about the people it happened to.

His argument was that we shouldn't disarm just because evil exists and guns can be mis-used. Using that as a way to suggest his death is justified or whatever people are implying is just gross and disgusting. Dude was 31 years old and had 2 young kids and simply went and talked to people. He was assassinated in front of his family for nothing more than talking. Nothing that he ever did was even close to deserving violence. If people can't take someone politely debating their ideas, then they're a whiny entitled baby and they're the problem.

He never once stated that “empathy is bad”. He had plenty of bad takes, but no need to misrepresent.

He was simply saying that the term empathy is overused vs sympathy

The terms mean different things, and he is very clear that one is good and the other is bad in his eyes, and that’t the reason for his opposition to the use of the one term.

People that don't like Charlie don't need to have sympathy for him, but not having sympathy and being douche bags in mass is something totally different.

"I can't stand the word empathy, actually," he continued. "I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time."

How can you not be a douche bag to someone who wants to kill you? How are homosexuals supposed to feel about this guy?

Ah yes... he wanted all homosexuals murdered[citation needed]. Good thing the good guys killed him eh?

As one of the people against whom his hate was routinely monged, I agree wholeheartedly. I won't mourn him personally because he was proud to tell us all how thrilled he would be if me and my partner got what he got, but I'm also not gonna engage in the gloating and performative grossness that the more hideously online seem to enjoy whether they're left or right. The people I love aren't safer because of this. In fact, we've already been tried and found guilty.

He wasn't even a hate monger though? Just because he was a republican means he's a hate monger and racist? I don't get it. I haven't seen one person accusing him of this stuff actually cite a quote that seemed like hate speech or racism? They just don't like facts being used in a debate that hurt their feeling. It's ridiculous. People need to grow up. There is a complete lack of maturity on the part of his critics. They want to live in a censored thought bubble and don't value the first amendment (or seem to understand it).

> I haven't seen one person accusing him of this stuff actually cite a quote that seemed like hate speech or racism?

You can peruse the "political views" section on his Wikipedia page if you want something comprehensive, but here's an example for you to chew on:

In one podcast interview, Kirk cited Leviticus 20:18 (he paraphrases as "if thou liest with another man, thou shalt be stoned") and called it "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." That's a pretty explicit endorsement of the death penalty for sodomy. If that isn't hate speech, what is?

> They [...] don't value the first amendment (or seem to understand it).

I think you're the one misunderstanding it. The first amendment protects people from government censorship, not infamy and disgrace.

Here's an attempt to steelman just one of the things you bring up: the great replacement theory.

The United States, like many developed nations, is experiencing a fertility crisis: it doesn't produce enough families and resulting children to sustain it's current population.

The US could take steps to address the underlying problems that result in declining fertility for it's current population, but it's unlikely to do so for several reasons that all boil down to political realities where the people that are most incentivized to vote (retired people who earn social security) would probably bear the brunt of the (significant) costs of such solutions. See the idea of "concentrated benefits, diffuse costs".

So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates (an option not equally available to all developed countries), resulting in young US citizens continuing to struggle to form families, and producing a fraying of the social fabric that such an inability to form families is likely to have on a society.

So you can see why some people would be duped into such a conspiracy theory, which purports to explain what people are seeing with their very eyes.

>So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates

Because that is working so good for Europe? At some point you need to understand that replacing a population is not the solution for low fertility population.

I think we agree, but in case I wasn't clear I will restate this more plainly: patching over the problem of fertility with immigration is toxic to the social fabric of a nation.

That's not really steelmanning. You can't steelman a position by saying it's not the real position but it dupes the rubes.

The great replacement theory is the theory that there is an intentional effort to dilute or replace the capital-W White, meaning the historical English/Scottish/Scotch Irish, population of the US, with immigrants and former slaves, and it usually involves a part that says that it is being done to weaken the country against its international competitors. A third part that is usually involved is that the process is being facilitated by and for the benefit of people like "international bankers", "cosmopolitans", "elites", etc., terms which have an antisemitic history.

To steelman it, you would have to steelman at least the intentional dilution part. Not just to say that it is hard to meet our demand for labor without immigration but that someone is coordinating it. Further, I don't think it has any meaning without the part that says it is being done to weaken the country, which you would have to show that not only would it weaken the country, but that is the intention of these coordinators.

Without that, you just have a demographic argument. If "Whites" do not have many children, and the population would otherwise shrink as a whole, while immigration is needed to satisfy demand for labor, then their proportion will shrink, but it is not "great replacement" without it being intentional/directed.

It is what I consider steelmanning.

Not of the conspiracy itself (I'm not interested in that, since the literal version isn't even well agreed upon by most of its believers) but of the observable pressures that make the conspiracy attractive.

I think I could convince an average believer in the great replacement theory (who would be a casual believer that doesn't know many of the specific details you've listed at length of the "official" version) that my restatement of the issue is what they're actually concerned about. In fact, I have had productive conversations with right wingers who express such a casual belief in this theory by telling them what I've written here in the comment you're replying to.

If anyone reads this and think it's not the fault of the politicians, or at least the boomers for "not wanting to help their children/grandchildren", it's pretty clear that their goal wasn't to solve the fertility crisis.

On top of that I don't even think most boomers need to be inconvininced. Increase capital taxes, remove the ceiling for SS taxes, give wokers a 4 day workweek, raise minimum wage, invest in 3rd places. A few steps give people the time and energy to meet and make families.

But it seems like we really will just go to civil war before we make sure rich people contribute to the nation.

I disagree that the measures you're suggesting will move the needle on fertility, since they will be enjoyed by singles, dinks, and families alike.

If you want more children you have to reward mothers directly and significantly in line with their potential earnings. Not a paltry few thousand dollars, but more than enough to offset the price of daycare in hcol cities. I want to mimic social security but for families, and that means concentrated benefits (that directly incentivize voting turnout and interest group formation).

At the same time I want our country to continue to be competitive globally when it comes to business, and not turn into whatever Europe has become. We can't just add this as a line item to our budget. We are not that rich and we have financial problems that are looming.

If a Baptist tells me I’m sinning because I smoke and drink whiskey, I don’t hate him, I just dismiss him. If Charlie Kirk said a male cannot be a woman, then the response was hate and was felt to be completely justified.

The hate mongering is from those who bow down to the zeitgeist of the age.

My hope is that Charlie Kirk bravely speaking the truth in the face of so much hate, even though it cost him his life, inspires many more to not fear for their lives to speak the truth, and raise their kids to be the same, until society turns and rejects what is false.

> A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms.

> I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."

What you are doing here is quite literally the opposite of steelmanning.

I've never heard of the "steelman" thought experiment

I'm familiar with the "strawman" concept that it derives from, although in my experience this is typically presented as a logical fallacy.

What is the purpose of "steelmanning" a political actor's political perspectives?

What is this supposed to achieve?

Where did you and the people responding to this comment hear about this concept? Are there articles out there making the case for "steelmanning"?

It's just that a lot of people argue badly, either because of lacking skill or lacking goodwill.

That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth.

If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong.

E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!"

And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better"

Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth.

I've seen this jargon around and use it myself but now that you ask I'm not sure where I first saw it.

tl;dr - good faith requires you to understand and do your best to represent the other side, not cherry pick sneaky "wins"

When I use the term my intent is to frame the opposing argument as strongly and clearly (and fairly!) as possible so that you can make your own point strongly and fairly. The critique of a "strawman argument" is a metaphor about arguing/fighting a training dummy instead of an actual enemy, usually by addressing only part of an argument or by ignoring context or using logical fallacies like motte and baily or false dichotomies. The idea is that it's very easy to look like your point wins when you fight the scarecrow; if it's actually a good argument face it off against the knight in armor actually fighting back.

I use steelmanning to connect across cultural divides. This way I don't end up writing off half the country as deplorables. If I simply wrote them off in this way it would be contributing to the decay of our social fabric. So instead I intend to mend the social fabric by attempting to understand the emotional place that these deplorable ideas come from, which by themselves are often quite reasonable. Isolation is often how people end up with these ideas, so it's important to connect to them, and ultimately to love them.

That goes for both sides of our political system, and beyond to the rural urban divide, the gender divide, the racial divide, the class divide, etc.

I think I found out about by reading rationalist stuff. E.g. Less wrong and slatestarcodex.

See for example: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/youre-probably-wonderi...

before "how" the question is "why" would you steelman his position? should you?

> what a debate looks like

Debates take all forms, and Charlie's form was just as valid as yours or anyone else's. Gatekeeping is falling out of fashion, just sayin...

That is simply not true.

I think that's the point.

The kind of individual who shoots someone for saying things he doesn't like is a narcissist.

Ideas anger narcissists because if they are counter to what they already believe, they are a personal affront, and if they cannot reason the challenge away because - quite simply, they're wrong and the other person is right - it creates a great anger in them.

And narcissism is prevailing in our culture currently. People far prefer to call the other side bad, stupid, etc, rather than introspect and consider that maybe you're not that smart, and maybe you don't know everything, and maybe what you believe is actually naive and just a manifestation of your sillyness.

The problem of course is that the only way opposing narcissists can overcome each other is by force. So there'll be less argument, and more go-straight-to violence.

Can you explain your argument further? I don't think it makes much sense, and I think you would struggle to find actual sources blaming narcissism outside your own conjecture.

A world where pugilism prevails over debate would look markedly different. I doubt Kirk would bother holding events if any of what you said was fundamentally true about politics.

>and maybe you don't know everything, and maybe what you believe is actually naive and just a manifestation of your sillyness.

I have coworkers lying low so they don't get deported from the country. And many were born here. I beyond exhausted of this "both sides" narrative as if I need any introspection on the prospect of "maybe we should exile people based on skin color".

If here is the US and they were born here, they are citizens, no? Why would they be worried about deportation?

> Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.

no he didn't, and this is absolutely self-evident, he trolled and victim-blamed and had no interest in talking to anyone about any kind of idea

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