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Comment by thephyber | Hacker News Reader

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I have not seen much of him, but I did watch a video from Jubilee where he was debating a bunch of people.

In that instance, I have to say I saw no indication of bath faith; to the contrary, he seemed to listen very carefully, and would use the most charitable interpretation of what people were saying. I’d heard a lot of negative things about him, so I was actually impressed. I might not have agreed with him, but he was genuine and respectful.

I think his death is truly a tragedy. I worry about how this will further radicalize the right, and the chilling effect it will have on already chilled discourse.

> but I did watch a video from Jubilee where he was debating a bunch of people.

Full, uncut video, or video edited and hosted by Kirk on his youtube channel?

I ask in good faith, I've seen him stumbling about badly in UK debating clubs where debate is an art form and I've seen "debates" on his channels that appear to have numerous edits.

I saw the video on the Jubilee channel- so far as I’m aware it is full and uncut.

I have not seen any videos from his channel, I wasn’t aware he had one though obviously in retrospect it is unsurprising.

I found it: https://youtu.be/WV29R1M25n8?si=N9dU3r4DxJzK1a2i

Perhaps if you watch it you’ll have a different impression than I did.

First thoughts, having never been aware of this whole "20 X Vs 1 of Y" Jubilee format before are that;

* this seems highly contrived, and

* "Now Casting 55+ year old Trump supporters for an upcoming SURROUNDED video" (on the home page)

supports that notion.

This isn't the format of Buckley V. Vidal (perhaps the start of the end of intellectual debate in the US) and nor is it a debate in the sense of equal time, three rounds (case, defense, conclusion), etc.

I've moved on to looking at:

The Problem with Jubilee’s Political Debate Videos - https://fhspost.com/10276/forum/the-problem-with-jubilees-po...

The ‘one voice against 20 extremists’ format is designed to monetise hate - https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/the-on...

which at a first rapid skim appear to flesh out many of the initial issues and feelings that I have.

Right now I have hedges to trim and a roof to tin so it'll be many hours before I can watch an hour and half contrived 'battle' and take notes .. but I will give it a shot.

Thanks for the link.

It’s definitely contrived, and Jubilee for sure seems to make clickbait-y videos. I don’t particularly fault them for it, it seems to be the arena they are playing in.

But I do think they are fairly neutral, and they get people who disagree to talk to each other, and I appreciate that.

I watched another video of theirs where it was inverted, with many conservative students debating one liberal pundit, and of course the students did worse- they’re just a bunch of kids. But good to be exposed to another point of view.

Best of luck on your hedges and roof! That sounds far more worthwhile than watching that video.

Jubilee does cut their videos just so you're aware. I've never heard of them ever releasing a full uncut version. They have good editors, it's hard to tell. They'll snip entire participant segments.

Not op but I've seen the video they referenced and their account is accurate from what I remember and the whole debate is shown (it's actually a long video). There were preselected topics with time limits for each one. The way they picked who was up was a bit odd with them basically racing to the chair but the ones not up there could vote to stop the current debaters turn and let someone else take over. It was definitely interesting.

In that production he was pretty engaged and most of the time seemed to be putting out relevant, thought out responses.

That's not to say there weren't any gotcha responses being thrown around but IIRC (it's been a while) it was coming from both sides of the debate. IIRC, there was some one of the debaters was actually more ,than Kirk (provided I'm not mixing up videos, healthy distrust for my memory lol).

Agreed. He was respectful of differing opinion, and encouraged diversity of thought. All Americans, from the left and right, should view this as a Fundimental aspect of a healthy democracy. We don't always need to agree, but if we cannot talk we are no longer an Nation.

Yeah, I agree. It's a poverty of ours that he's the most prominent "debater" we've seen. Ideally we'd have a few dozen folks, maybe even a whole culture that debates. That way I think it'd be harder for grifters to gain a huge following through slick edits and rhetorical tricks.

Nonetheless I think his killing will have more of a chilling effect on debate of any sort, though I'd like to proven wrong and see a more trend of more sober, thoughtful debate take hold.

If you have a certain argument to a certain talking point, then you're always going to repeat that same argument whenever that talking point emerges. There's nothing bad faith about that. These kinds of arguments get repetitive so you're going to see people repeat the same points.

As for the value of debate, even bad debate is better than nothing. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing being gained from it, but if you question people who have engaged in a lot of debates, you find that they're much more informed after the debates — even very acrimonious debates, where both sides are just trying to defeat the other side — than they were before it. A society needs people to communicate, for it to progress in its ability to effectively coordinate on complex social issues, and that process of communication is not going to be without warts, given how complex these social issues are, and how high the stakes are for a great number of people.

Societies which embrace civil discourse and protect free speech are far better off for it. This killing strikes at the heart of a civil society.

Charlie Kirk’s “certain argument” was “what is a woman?”. He would gish gallop weak and fallacious arguments to pretend like his definition was valuable (it wasn’t) and he would steam roll the nuanced definitions provided by his interlocutors.

And no, bad debate isn’t necessarily valuable and that dichotomy doesn’t get us anywhere. Kirk was not the only person doing valuable debates. He was a propagandist with a façade of debater.

Medhi Hasan is an eminently more honest and more skilled debater. Destiny is decent (although he does streaming debates for a living, so he gets a little too “debate bro” for my taste). Matt Dillahunty and some of his crowd are more informed and charitable than Kirk was.

We should be encouraging young minds to seek out honest interlocutors, not ones that sate their “dunking” appetites.

I’m not arguing for killing and your framing is not valuable. I’m arguing that Kirk was not a good role model for the kind of debate where people might actually learn facts.

Regarding even bad debate being better than no debate, I used to believe the same, then realized how much progress had been made in the process of low-quality arguments between 'heels dug in' interlocutors. It was like the inverse of a frog slowly being boiled.

Alas, we can agree to disagree.

But the question "what is a woman" is trying to get at finding this honesty. Even many allegedly highly educated professors respond to that with the answer "anyone that feels like one," which is an absurd and and demands the obvious response "but what is that thing?" Simply because a position can be correctly assailed with such a blunt question does not mean the criticism is not valid. Of course, it doesn't.

The professors are likely willing to differentiate between biological sex and gender. Kirk purposefully conflated the two to suit his debate needs.

The question doesn't predispose that one consider sex synonymous with gender.

The question was never the problem. It was always how Kirk chose to respond after the answer.

The problem was the answer was self-referential, e.g. "anyone who identifies as a woman"

But you haven't made a point, the question remains: "what is that thing?"

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