Debate experiments at The Curve, LessOnline and Manifest

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 Debate experiments at The Curve, LessOnline and Manifest 

 by Nathan Young 13th Jun 2025 Linkpost for nathanpmyoung.substack.com 6 min read 12 36

 I like debate. I have done for years. So I have been slowly trying to improve it. Here is a set of theories I had and things, experiments I've run so far.

 Theory: Any debates are good. 

 Are any debates actually good at all? Should I give up?

 Test: Watch different debates.

 Evidence: I much prefer some debates to others.

 Good debates:

 Dr. Richard Carrier andDr. Michael Licona . I like how they chat to one another.
 Destiny and Ben Shapiro . I recall liking this one. I remember them as having good chemistry.
 Jubilee’s “ Surrounded ” debates. I love an experimental format and these get a lot of different arguments in a short amount of time [1] .
 Bad debates:

 Finkelstein, Destiny and M. Rabbani & Benny Morris . Long and acrimonious. I think Lex Fridman is deeply guilty of the “I’ll just let them talk it out” school of debate. I think this is lazy.
 Most things with William Lane Craig. Craig is an excellent debater on theology. I’m not sure I recall him ever losing. But his debates always hinge on niche points or technical arguments I don’t care about.
 Anything with Jordan B. Peterson. Like trying to nail a cake to a wall.
 Presidential debates. Trump in particular can lie with no cost at all, so he does.
 Unclear:

 Ezra Klein, Sam Harris . Bad that they don’t understand one another, but pretty interesting as a historical artefact to see two clever men who I like really fail to understand one another for very ~2018 culture war reasons.
 Matt Dillahunty, Matthew Adelstein (aka Bentham's Bulldog ). Dillahunty is sloppy but somehow his audience think he’s making good points. Frustrating to watch.
 Status: Theory survived attempted falsification [2] .

 Theory: The format is the problem. 

 Test: Run some different debate formats (see next).

 Theory: Debates are bad because debaters focus on their own status. 

 They have to focus on how they appear to the audience and this stops them admitting points where they are wrong.

 Test 1: Find ways to protect the status of the debaters

 Evidence :

 I tried running two debates like this at The Curve ( Daniel Kokatajlo vs. Sayash Kapoor ; Dean W. Ball vs. Gabriel Weil ). I tried to moderate a bit more strongly than people tend to, ensuring that there were blocks of time where each was in control of the discussion.

 The debates were okay but not great.

 In both, it took us a long time to get to what felt like the meat of the discussion. I recall Ball and Weil saying they didn’t really understand one another’s position coming in.

 In the the Ball vs. Weil debate, they weren’t really in

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