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/lit/ - Literature

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14763955 No.14763955 [Reply] [Original]

Why do people care about debates over written discussions?
Often times you see people calling writers/thinkers/etc to debate publicly as if this is somehow better than comparing their written work.
Writing a book or a thesis or even a paper often takes weeks, months, years and allows you to carefully polish every argument and make sure you are not forgetting anything out of some circumstance.
A debate lasts at most a couple hours, and proves absolutely fucking nothing about the points being discussed. At most it shows one side is a better showman. A debate is just a performance, not unlike a theater play or a concert.

I'm convinced only absolute idiots even listen to debates instead of reading books by the parties involved. Can someone change my mind?

>> No.14763962

>>14763955
Entertainment.

>> No.14763976

plebs

>> No.14764004

Spectacle

>> No.14764006
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14764006

>>14763955
Two reason:

1: Because most people do not have the time or patience to sit down and read a 1,000 page work of Hegelian philosophy. If you fail to understand why this is it's because you're a pseud out of touch with reality and people in general, you possibly have Asperger's.

2: The fact that you don't have years to prepare for a debate is what makes them entertaining to people. The ability to refute points on the spot and engage in a dialogue, which is more natural for humans than writing, shows whether you know your stuff or not.

>I'm convinced only absolute idiots even listen to debates instead of reading books by the parties involved.
This is because you're a seething pseud. "Stop liking what I don't like!" Go outside and smell the roses, bud.

>> No.14764017

Because public debates have a social function that written dialogue doesn't.

>> No.14764037

>>14764006
>>14764017
>Muh entertainment.
That's fine as long as you don't pretend debates are good tools for finding new truths or proving anything, but that's not what people do.
So fuck off with your goalpost moving.

>> No.14764064

>>14764037
But they are you fucking retard. If you are a philosopher and the extent of your ability to communicate your ideas with people is hidden inside massive esoteric works of literature, then you are a horrible philosopher because nobody except a tiny minority of the human population is ever going to read it. It is the mark of an actual intellectual when they can take difficult concepts and express them in layman's terms so the average person who slaves their life away in a coal mine or something can learn something new without having to devote 10 years of their life that they don't have to reading a hundred 1,000 page books.

Human social interaction has been reliant on debate and dialogue since our earliest governments. It's why the State of the Union is given as a speech and not a circular letter mailed to every household in America. It's why debates garner the attention of ordinary people and academics alike. It's very easy to sit down and "prove" something to yourself in writing, it's something else entirely when you are taken out of your echo chamber and forced to respond to criticism on the fly as it comes at you, without much time to think.

Like I said, the reason you don't understand any of this is because you are a pseud. You also apparently don't know the definition of goalpost moving.

>> No.14764114

>>14764064
>massive esoteric works of literature
I'm sorry Hegel hurt you so bad sweetie, and I'm sorry you don't like reading long books with no colorful images, but if you can't put your idea down into a rigorous format on paper, it shouldn't matter if you can weasel it into a good argument by playing word games on a live stage.
Books can have 1000 pages and not be hermetic or esoteric or whatever bullshit. Books can have 100 pages and prove extremely important concepts. A paper can have 5 pages and change the history of philosophy/science. But the ideas presented in those formats will always have a more rigorous format and polishing than something said live as a reaction to something someone else says. For you to think there is something pseud about this makes me believe you actually are seriously scared of non fiction books or something.

>Human social interaction has been reliant on debate and dialogue since our earliest governments
And that's why so there are so many open ended discussions on topics where two sides just fling shit at each other and clap at their representatives on debates. Also
> It's very easy to sit down and "prove" something to yourself in writing, it's something else entirely when you are taken out of your echo chamber and forced to respond to criticism on the fly as it comes at you, without much time to think.
So you're just rephrasing my initial point but trying to make it sound bad. Why are you so fucking dense. It might be """easy""" to sit down and prove something for YOURSELF, maybe if you like eating crayons. If you have any kind of rigor, it's not that easy, and if you have even more rigor, you know your writing shouldn't prove things only to yourself, but also to others who have time to read your text calmly and find flaws and write their own rebuttals. That is precisely why this is better than just answering to shit in real time with no preparation, and precisely why that doesn't mean shit.

>You also apparently don't know the definition of goalpost moving.
"Haha debates were never about proving shit sweetie, debates are all about entertainment and social functions. But Ben Shapiro totally destroyed those Marxists didn't he hahaha"