Good Debate
A while ago I found a debate series called Intelligence Squared that I find quite enjoyable. They have audio and video archives of all their past debates which cover a range of topics. It's interesting to see how the skill of the debater is usually painfully obvious. Sometimes they are even making a good point but their delivery is so awful that it nullifies any merit their argument might have had. They have the audience vote for or against the motion (or undecided) before and after the debate and the winner is the side that has the largest positive pre/post movement
This is an older debate that I watched this week while taping up a stack of textbooks. It might be my favorite of those that I've watched. The debaters were all pretty good, and a couple of them were British which is always more entertaining for some reason. I think it also had the largest opinion swing that I've seen. Click on the results tab here if you don't have two hours to watch the debate.
Major Reductions in Carbon Emissions are Not Worth the Money
This is an older debate that I watched this week while taping up a stack of textbooks. It might be my favorite of those that I've watched. The debaters were all pretty good, and a couple of them were British which is always more entertaining for some reason. I think it also had the largest opinion swing that I've seen. Click on the results tab here if you don't have two hours to watch the debate.
Comments
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/558-clean-energy-can-drive-americas-economic-recovery
I'll tell you my problem with these. It looks like lots of them set a businessman, politico or politician type against an academic type. I suppose some politicians have more name recognition, but academic types almost always do better at these kind of debates. In the one I watched, the "for" side simply had no chance against Steven Hayward.
I watched a documentary about Bjorn Lomborg recently, where he picks apart all the false claims in An Inconvenient Truth. I liked, it until the end where he proposed we spend as much money as we would spend to meet the Kyoto protocol, just on his other statist ambitions.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/607-major-reductions-in-carbon-emissions-are-not-worth-the-money
DECLARED WINNER: AGAINST THE MOTION
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/598-guns-reduce-crime