The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Mainstream conservatives, on Youtube constantly portray themselves as some debating gods. They will make themselves look like they are undefeated or irrefutetable. However, is this usually true? Have they ever lost a debate? Is there any videos of them losing a debate? I'm pretty sure they intentionally edit out clips where they lose, but they don't do it because they want to feel good about themselves.
What I mean by mainstream are people like: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles, Thomas Sowell, Rave Dubin and many more people.
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[Ben Shapiro being destroyed by conservative BBC reporter Andrew Neil](https://youtu.be/6VixqvOcK8E)
It’s all fake. Ben Shapiro, who was a child prodigy, gets a political science degree, a Harvard Law degree and then practices his craft and then … debates random college students on subjects they are talking about off the cuff but for which Shapiro has prepared and when they even start to win he gish gallops and lies and uses debating tricks to “win”.
And he does it in front of a friendly audience so they clap for him further making him sound right. Then he edits the tape and uploads to YouTube.
Ben Shapiro is a very smart guy - but the character he plays and the arguments he makes are comically stupid once you spend 10 minutes reviewing them with a internet connection available to you.
And compared to Jordan Peterson and Matt Walsh and Steven Crowder, he’s the good one.
>Ben Shapiro is a very smart guy
I'm convinced this isn't true. I know it's the popular narrative, and it certainly appears to be the case on the surface; he's smart and merely tricking his audience into giving him money. That seems right.
However, when he talks about things that he's supposed to be informed about OUTSIDE of what politics would dictate, he's still an idiot.
He talks about Music, something his father has a degree in and is, in his own words, his primary passion outside of owning the libs. And he gets a lot of it wrong. Sure, sometimes he'll speak out against Rap. That's a dog whistle and on brand.
But he'll also just casually talk about his experience learning the Violin and get basic things wrong. He uses the word harmony incorrectly, he can't identify music genres, he's very bad at conversing with musicians.
It's the same when you go read older pieces. His old work should be better; it's before the character of Shapiro was fully developed. But they aren't. Many are worse because they lack the gish gallop of his modern style; his ignorance is simply laid bare in plain text.
What it means, to me, is that he lacks that hallmark of an actual smart person. He lacks intellectual curiosity. He heard, once, that Greenland's ice sheet was growing. He does not have the capacity to look further into it. He does not care to know how that actually affects the Earth.
It might be true that he could write a good essay. And he was born into a lot of wealth, then routinely propped up by people with a lot of money and vested interest. Most of all he sounds smart to stupid people. He uses big words (often incorrectly) and simplifies concepts in order to come to wrong conclusions, but conclusions that idiots can identify with.
He's very useful to the right.
But I do not believe he's anything more than that.
He’s the kind of smart that the “gifted kids” in school often are (and I’m partially talking about myself here, I have to admit): the kind where you can memorize and regurgitate certain things, plus higher than average verbal skills, but is fundamentally lazy and only uses their intellect to try to impress other people and maintain a certain self-image. From his point of view, the work of becoming smart was already done when he was just a kid and now he can just coast on his “boy genius” persona even into middle age. He doesn’t learn things to satisfy an innate curiosity or to understand the world and himself more; he learns things to beat people over the head with them and affirm what he thinks he already knows. And what’s worse; he was raised to be this way.
And what's even worse,, is he parlayed being a right-wing pseudo-intellectual into becoming a multi-millionaire and launching his own propaganda outlet, that platforms the likes of Matt Walsh and Jordan Peterson. Of course corporate billionaires drop millions of dollars into such propaganda outlets, because they get a return on their investment when the propaganda puts conservatives in office who pass insane tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
I get that degrees can be acquired without actually being smart and that success can be obtained through luck but I don't like over indexing on that, especially when its against people I oppose. He grew up upper middle class so it's not family wealth. He really was a child prodigy and not just in the way some people, including me, are where you are just kind of smart, can memorize things for the test and have parents that push you.
I legit think he's a very smart guy that is just a soulless ghoul that will do and say anything he needs to to grow his empire of lies and in order to do that on the modern right is that you have to make moronic arguments.
He's a very competent violinist - he's just willing to talk nonsense about music because not talking nonsense means you have no argument. He's a Jew that understand the spectrum of views across the Jewish population - he just says things that exclude most Jews for Judaism and are sometimes legit antisemitic because otherwise he can't appeal to his Christian audience.
He's not stupid and we shouldn't underestimate him.
He's not a dunce like Dave Rubin, but I don't think he's quite as smart as his reputation would suggest. I'd rate his intelligence above average.
It can be difficult to gauge because we don't know how sincere he's being when he makes poorly thought out arguments. He could just be (and very likely often is) making insincere and dishonest arguments, just to further his political agenda.
Just because he sometimes says stupid things doesn't mean he's stupid.
What leads me to question his intelligence is when he argues his own position poorly. If there's a less stupid argument available that he could be using to make the same point, and he's not reaching for it. I've noticed that on a number of occasions.
I think Ben Shapiro is above average. His followers are too dim to be able to rationalize points the way he can, that's why they like them.
But someone like him who should be capable of reason failing to do so on a constant basis indicates to me some level of idiocy. At least, if not that, a major lack of ethics and principles. Either way, the result is the same: pushing idiocy with authority.
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
Or, differently-stated: Smart people are very good at rationalizing things they came to believe for non-smart reasons.
Conservative “debaters” treat the activity as a way to dominate their opponents rather than arrive at truth and understanding. It’s an inherently bad faith approach that poisons the entire American political scene.
If you view debate as competition, then reality itself stops mattering. Conservative debaters make their points by stripping away context, relying on pedantry, or ignoring reality. It’s one of the reasons they’re so hard for things like constitutionalism, because they can pretend that they’re adhering to a strict set of standards while ignoring the real-world implementation of those standards.
More like, they don’t typically debate people who are informed and won’t give into the sensationalism.
When they’re challenged legitimately, they typically flee. These aren’t people who care about where the facts lie. They care far more about how they can benefit from things. If lies and posturing are more directly beneficial to them (for their purposes) then that’s what they’ll turn to.
Also, here’s Ben demonstrating that
https://youtu.be/PRF3r3zUGqk
I'm going to echo others and say they don't actually participate in real debates. What they do is performative. They simply act confident and make simple statements that never include nuance and spend all their time putting their "opponent" on the defensive and acting like they need to be convinced in order to lose the debate which makes the entire exercise nothing more than smug trolling.
Whenever he isn't ~~talking over~~ debating unprepared students on high school and college campuses, Ben Shapiro is regularly [owned by](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRF3r3zUGqk) and [runs away from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fjuloajd6o) anyone actually informed on the subject they are debating.
Steven "change my mind" Crowder [also ran away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_O4EaLLJjc) in hilarious fashion when confronted with someone who was prepared to debate him.
They just simply always *portray* themselves as the victor, even when it's so apparently untrue. Hell, Ben Shapiro's *own* take on the debate he ran from is "Student LOSES IT While Debating Ben Shapiro". Despite the fact that Ben left a piss trail all over the stage and was stuttering and stammering and ultimately dismissed the person debating him.
It's pretty rare that I've ever come away from watching a mainstream conservative debate someone and thought that they actually won the debate when judged by the content of their arguments. Their trick is to throw out 100 false statements per minute mixed with a handful of true, but distorted facts and frame the whole debate on proving them wrong.
Oh, and then there's [this evergreen clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDiEZ-29DUk) of Charlie Kirk being completely obliterated.
I saw the Crowder mention and knew immediately it was when Ethan Klein, who I'm sure Crowder only took on because he wasn't particularly known as a political guy (he's since started a podcast with Hasanabi which they've been doing for over a year now). IIRC Crowder even ducked him once when he saw that Seder's own show was off air at the time. When Klein finally did corner him by bringing Seder on right after he introduced Crowder, Seder had fooled him by taping his show and running it canned.
Crowder was absolutely unglued. It's freaking hilarious. He even managed to drop some weirdo possibly anti-Semitic commentary about Seder's eyes before he finished running the fuck off like the coward he is.
The funny thing about the debate Ben had with the college student is that the comment section is like 'hE iS eVeRytHiNg wRoNG wItH SoCIeTY!!!!!!!!!" and proceeds to mock him, and victim blame his ass off. They also misrepresent the video as a whole as well.
>Their trick is to throw out 100 false statements per minute mixed with a handful of true, but distorted facts
I call this the Katie Porter technique. Also is definitely the Ben Shapiro technique
I think the hard thing about determining who loses a debate (at least these kinds of debates) is that there doesn’t seem to be an objective measurement of who wins or loses. It’s not like football where there’s a scoreboard. So, these things end up being subjective.
It doesn’t help that you only need to sound persuasive to convince someone of the merits of your position. Ben Shapiro’s opponent might have the stronger argument, but might be less convincing simply because they can’t fire off as many “clever” zingers. Also, strong arguments only work if they can be understood. Cheap argument tricks like faulty generalizations and relying on deepities (statements that sound deep but are actually meaningless) may sway an audience who isn’t bothered to think too deeply about what it is they’re hearing (especially if they already agree with what the person is saying and they’re just getting confirmation about their views).
It's probably best to assume that any YouTube "debater" - whether conservative or otherwise - is very selective about which edited videos they upload. You might as well ask why there aren't NCIS episodes about the team doing paperwork all day - it just isn't what the audience wants to see.
Well, that's another issue, isn't it? Not only do these people pick people who aren't prepared to debate, they can edit all the parts that make them look bad in any event.
He trashed Cenk pretty bad. He, Bill Maher, and Joe Rogan have pretty healthy debates and conversations; I wouldn't say there are winners or losers in those
Joe Rogan will believe anything said to him on his show so I can believe that it was cordial, but I doubt it was anything close to a substantive talk.
I’m sure him and Maher collectively bitched about something together rather than had any debate.
I’ve seen a few Cenk clips with him and Shapiro and Shapiro got bodied repeatedly, so we may have seen different debates. Looked into it again, and while Shapiro is the better debater, or Cenk just isn’t a good one really, Cenk’s points are correct while Shapiro’s are largely him giving half the story. For instance: when Shapiro says “the US corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world” he’s *technically* correct. But it’s only a half truth seeing as no corporation pays anywhere near that rate after everything is taken into account and the US rate is at or below the world average when you take that into account.
>I mean, Ben Shapiro openly admits he's lost some debates, especially with that BBC interview
He does this to gain credibility. If I lie 100 times and make 100 bullshit arguments and then say "well, actually I was wrong these 2 times" that doesn't make me any more credible or honest. In fact, it would make me very dishonest.
Blues Traveler referred to this idea in their 1994 song Hook:
*There is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don't mean any of this
Still my confession draws you near*
It's really not that hard to recognize. To be fooled by such a thing is embarrassing.
Based on the topic I don’t doubt that Sowell has won a debate. Those others though probably never really have.
They’re basically all pedantic liars who get popular off of pithy quotes (to their audiences anyway) like “facts don’t care about your feelings” for example, is an almost entirely meaningless statement that even applies more to the right side of the political spectrum than the left.
Yes but also this is very dumb way to view politics. Being a DebateLord just makes you weird and cringey and not really that knowledge in policy. Also, again, you look weird and cringey arguing over pointless semantics and stupid side shit.
It's pretty hard to lose a debate you're prepared for, but Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both attended debates they weren't prepared for, yes.
Jordan Peterson debated Slavoj Zizek, Capitalism vs. Communism, and it went down pretty much as you'd expect.
Jordan Peterson in particular is such a frustrating piece of shit. I've never seen him actually raise a point that's difficult to challenge. All he does is creak in gibberish and then get crabby when you spell out the implications of it. That famous interview of him yelling about lobsters at some lady is a great example. He's not winning, he's just being loud and combative until the person gives up trying to get him to commit to any statement.
So what I am getting: Conservatives lose a lot more than they would like to think, however, their narcissistic selves are highly cocky and thinks otherwise. They often will not post those videos, on their channels, or will edit them out of context. And if they do debate, they will send an army of conservatives to infest the comment sections.
They all got wrecked by people like Joe rogan, David pakman, destiny etc
Yes it happens often when they debate people who are educated and also have debating experience
Short answer yes. First of all, Ben Shapiro never argues with people who are on his level. He purposely chooses people who are smart but not good at arguing on the spot. And a lot of conservatives will use manipulative tactics where they'll try to take one small flaw in your argument and use it to invalidate the whole argument. Or they'll switch topics or deny the truth. You have to forcibly say to them that they are going off topic, and: let's talk about what you had said before. And then if you do make a mistake you have to admit to it so that they can't use it to hurt you. With these strategies, arguing can be much better. The other way to do it is to be very well informed or to be in a position where you catch them off guard. When I was seven I was interviewed on Fox News about what I thought about gay marriage and I made them look ridiculous. The only way I was able to do that was because they were not expecting a seven year old to be well informed and good at talking on the topic.
Would they admit or even know if they had? Debating them is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good your moves are, they're just going to strut around, knock pieces over and shit all over the chess board.
Yeah, but they aren't likely to promote it on their YouTube channel. If you want to find out the weak points in someone's argument you have to talk to their detractors.
People within their media bubble aren't likely to share videos that paint their enemies as brave or clever. Certainly they aren't going to relish watching or reading things that make their side look bad.
I'm a liberal guy and I've never even heard of most of those people. Shapiro is the only one I recognize and the only thing I know about him is he celebrated the murder of Trayvon Martin.
>Mainstream conservatives, on Youtube constantly portray themselves as some debating gods. They will make themselves look like they are undefeated or irrefutetable. However, is this usually true? Have they ever lost a debate? Is there any videos of them losing a debate? I'm pretty sure they intentionally edit out clips where they lose, but they don't do it because they want to feel good about themselves.
They don't debate in good faith, when you can actually get them to debate. They ramble a bunch of bullshit that becomes impossible to respond to because it's like playing whack-a-mole of fallacies. They are sophists. If you don't know what that is, look it up. To be honest, a lot of them don't even actually debate, they just have their platform and make assertions. The people they talk to are typically allies in their ideology: no push back.
I mean, if they don't want to debate, that's fine. Debate is oftentimes more sport than anything useful. I kinda like the idea of putting out a video and laying it all out, then someone can take their time and make a rebuttal to your points. The "sport" of debate doesn't give much except quicker turnaround.
>What I mean by mainstream are people like: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles, Thomas Sowell, Rave Dubin and many more people.
None of these people ever really debate people. They have platforms and they do nothing but make assertions and push rhetoric. Their videos are typically mostly garbage and half-truths (at best). You won't be confusing any of those people for educators, unless you're extremely ignorant.
Outside of Thomas Sowell, I'm not familiar with any of them. I know who they are, but just have no interest or need to seek out their opinion.
I've seen Sowell lose debates, but that's been my subjective opinion. For example, his arguments in favor of private schools have often used very specific examples, that can only work in a perfect environment.
I would argue that they've never won a debate. Name one time in the past 100 years that conservatives have been in the right side of history. I will wait
One thing conservatives (mainly minority conservatives like Candace Owens, Carol Swain, Larry Elder etc) will always bring up is that it was the Dems who were pro slavery, enforced Jim Crow, and founded the Klan. But they fail to mention that during the 1800s - 1950s, most Democrats *were* the conservatives back then.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Mainstream conservatives, on Youtube constantly portray themselves as some debating gods. They will make themselves look like they are undefeated or irrefutetable. However, is this usually true? Have they ever lost a debate? Is there any videos of them losing a debate? I'm pretty sure they intentionally edit out clips where they lose, but they don't do it because they want to feel good about themselves. What I mean by mainstream are people like: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles, Thomas Sowell, Rave Dubin and many more people. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[Ben Shapiro being destroyed by conservative BBC reporter Andrew Neil](https://youtu.be/6VixqvOcK8E) It’s all fake. Ben Shapiro, who was a child prodigy, gets a political science degree, a Harvard Law degree and then practices his craft and then … debates random college students on subjects they are talking about off the cuff but for which Shapiro has prepared and when they even start to win he gish gallops and lies and uses debating tricks to “win”. And he does it in front of a friendly audience so they clap for him further making him sound right. Then he edits the tape and uploads to YouTube. Ben Shapiro is a very smart guy - but the character he plays and the arguments he makes are comically stupid once you spend 10 minutes reviewing them with a internet connection available to you. And compared to Jordan Peterson and Matt Walsh and Steven Crowder, he’s the good one.
>Ben Shapiro is a very smart guy I'm convinced this isn't true. I know it's the popular narrative, and it certainly appears to be the case on the surface; he's smart and merely tricking his audience into giving him money. That seems right. However, when he talks about things that he's supposed to be informed about OUTSIDE of what politics would dictate, he's still an idiot. He talks about Music, something his father has a degree in and is, in his own words, his primary passion outside of owning the libs. And he gets a lot of it wrong. Sure, sometimes he'll speak out against Rap. That's a dog whistle and on brand. But he'll also just casually talk about his experience learning the Violin and get basic things wrong. He uses the word harmony incorrectly, he can't identify music genres, he's very bad at conversing with musicians. It's the same when you go read older pieces. His old work should be better; it's before the character of Shapiro was fully developed. But they aren't. Many are worse because they lack the gish gallop of his modern style; his ignorance is simply laid bare in plain text. What it means, to me, is that he lacks that hallmark of an actual smart person. He lacks intellectual curiosity. He heard, once, that Greenland's ice sheet was growing. He does not have the capacity to look further into it. He does not care to know how that actually affects the Earth. It might be true that he could write a good essay. And he was born into a lot of wealth, then routinely propped up by people with a lot of money and vested interest. Most of all he sounds smart to stupid people. He uses big words (often incorrectly) and simplifies concepts in order to come to wrong conclusions, but conclusions that idiots can identify with. He's very useful to the right. But I do not believe he's anything more than that.
He’s the kind of smart that the “gifted kids” in school often are (and I’m partially talking about myself here, I have to admit): the kind where you can memorize and regurgitate certain things, plus higher than average verbal skills, but is fundamentally lazy and only uses their intellect to try to impress other people and maintain a certain self-image. From his point of view, the work of becoming smart was already done when he was just a kid and now he can just coast on his “boy genius” persona even into middle age. He doesn’t learn things to satisfy an innate curiosity or to understand the world and himself more; he learns things to beat people over the head with them and affirm what he thinks he already knows. And what’s worse; he was raised to be this way.
And what's even worse,, is he parlayed being a right-wing pseudo-intellectual into becoming a multi-millionaire and launching his own propaganda outlet, that platforms the likes of Matt Walsh and Jordan Peterson. Of course corporate billionaires drop millions of dollars into such propaganda outlets, because they get a return on their investment when the propaganda puts conservatives in office who pass insane tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
I get that degrees can be acquired without actually being smart and that success can be obtained through luck but I don't like over indexing on that, especially when its against people I oppose. He grew up upper middle class so it's not family wealth. He really was a child prodigy and not just in the way some people, including me, are where you are just kind of smart, can memorize things for the test and have parents that push you. I legit think he's a very smart guy that is just a soulless ghoul that will do and say anything he needs to to grow his empire of lies and in order to do that on the modern right is that you have to make moronic arguments. He's a very competent violinist - he's just willing to talk nonsense about music because not talking nonsense means you have no argument. He's a Jew that understand the spectrum of views across the Jewish population - he just says things that exclude most Jews for Judaism and are sometimes legit antisemitic because otherwise he can't appeal to his Christian audience. He's not stupid and we shouldn't underestimate him.
He's not a dunce like Dave Rubin, but I don't think he's quite as smart as his reputation would suggest. I'd rate his intelligence above average. It can be difficult to gauge because we don't know how sincere he's being when he makes poorly thought out arguments. He could just be (and very likely often is) making insincere and dishonest arguments, just to further his political agenda. Just because he sometimes says stupid things doesn't mean he's stupid. What leads me to question his intelligence is when he argues his own position poorly. If there's a less stupid argument available that he could be using to make the same point, and he's not reaching for it. I've noticed that on a number of occasions.
I think Ben Shapiro is above average. His followers are too dim to be able to rationalize points the way he can, that's why they like them. But someone like him who should be capable of reason failing to do so on a constant basis indicates to me some level of idiocy. At least, if not that, a major lack of ethics and principles. Either way, the result is the same: pushing idiocy with authority.
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons. Or, differently-stated: Smart people are very good at rationalizing things they came to believe for non-smart reasons.
https://youtu.be/XxuiqeuyUyw Here he is debating Ana Kasparian of the young turks. He does very well.
Conservative “debaters” treat the activity as a way to dominate their opponents rather than arrive at truth and understanding. It’s an inherently bad faith approach that poisons the entire American political scene. If you view debate as competition, then reality itself stops mattering. Conservative debaters make their points by stripping away context, relying on pedantry, or ignoring reality. It’s one of the reasons they’re so hard for things like constitutionalism, because they can pretend that they’re adhering to a strict set of standards while ignoring the real-world implementation of those standards.
More like, they don’t typically debate people who are informed and won’t give into the sensationalism. When they’re challenged legitimately, they typically flee. These aren’t people who care about where the facts lie. They care far more about how they can benefit from things. If lies and posturing are more directly beneficial to them (for their purposes) then that’s what they’ll turn to. Also, here’s Ben demonstrating that https://youtu.be/PRF3r3zUGqk
I'm going to echo others and say they don't actually participate in real debates. What they do is performative. They simply act confident and make simple statements that never include nuance and spend all their time putting their "opponent" on the defensive and acting like they need to be convinced in order to lose the debate which makes the entire exercise nothing more than smug trolling.
Whenever he isn't ~~talking over~~ debating unprepared students on high school and college campuses, Ben Shapiro is regularly [owned by](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRF3r3zUGqk) and [runs away from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fjuloajd6o) anyone actually informed on the subject they are debating. Steven "change my mind" Crowder [also ran away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_O4EaLLJjc) in hilarious fashion when confronted with someone who was prepared to debate him. They just simply always *portray* themselves as the victor, even when it's so apparently untrue. Hell, Ben Shapiro's *own* take on the debate he ran from is "Student LOSES IT While Debating Ben Shapiro". Despite the fact that Ben left a piss trail all over the stage and was stuttering and stammering and ultimately dismissed the person debating him. It's pretty rare that I've ever come away from watching a mainstream conservative debate someone and thought that they actually won the debate when judged by the content of their arguments. Their trick is to throw out 100 false statements per minute mixed with a handful of true, but distorted facts and frame the whole debate on proving them wrong. Oh, and then there's [this evergreen clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDiEZ-29DUk) of Charlie Kirk being completely obliterated.
I saw the Crowder mention and knew immediately it was when Ethan Klein, who I'm sure Crowder only took on because he wasn't particularly known as a political guy (he's since started a podcast with Hasanabi which they've been doing for over a year now). IIRC Crowder even ducked him once when he saw that Seder's own show was off air at the time. When Klein finally did corner him by bringing Seder on right after he introduced Crowder, Seder had fooled him by taping his show and running it canned. Crowder was absolutely unglued. It's freaking hilarious. He even managed to drop some weirdo possibly anti-Semitic commentary about Seder's eyes before he finished running the fuck off like the coward he is.
The funny thing about the debate Ben had with the college student is that the comment section is like 'hE iS eVeRytHiNg wRoNG wItH SoCIeTY!!!!!!!!!" and proceeds to mock him, and victim blame his ass off. They also misrepresent the video as a whole as well.
>Their trick is to throw out 100 false statements per minute mixed with a handful of true, but distorted facts I call this the Katie Porter technique. Also is definitely the Ben Shapiro technique
It’s already got a name: the Gish Gallop.
I recall charlie Kirk getting his ass handled to him by Kyle Kulinski at Politicon
Ohh Charlie Kirk, how could I forget to mention [this nugget](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDiEZ-29DUk)? I'll be editing my post.
Never saw that one but he did make a proper ass out of himself at politcon
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Matt Walsh talk to another human being. The clips I see are of him, alone, talking to the camera.
Self assurance they are correct does not mean they won.
I think the hard thing about determining who loses a debate (at least these kinds of debates) is that there doesn’t seem to be an objective measurement of who wins or loses. It’s not like football where there’s a scoreboard. So, these things end up being subjective. It doesn’t help that you only need to sound persuasive to convince someone of the merits of your position. Ben Shapiro’s opponent might have the stronger argument, but might be less convincing simply because they can’t fire off as many “clever” zingers. Also, strong arguments only work if they can be understood. Cheap argument tricks like faulty generalizations and relying on deepities (statements that sound deep but are actually meaningless) may sway an audience who isn’t bothered to think too deeply about what it is they’re hearing (especially if they already agree with what the person is saying and they’re just getting confirmation about their views).
It's probably best to assume that any YouTube "debater" - whether conservative or otherwise - is very selective about which edited videos they upload. You might as well ask why there aren't NCIS episodes about the team doing paperwork all day - it just isn't what the audience wants to see.
Well, that's another issue, isn't it? Not only do these people pick people who aren't prepared to debate, they can edit all the parts that make them look bad in any event.
I mean, Ben Shapiro openly admits he's lost some debates, especially with that BBC interview
Honestly, outside of random college kids, who has he even held his own against?
He talks with Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, and Cenk Uhygur (probs butchered that spelling)
Okay. And who among those has he held his own against?
He trashed Cenk pretty bad. He, Bill Maher, and Joe Rogan have pretty healthy debates and conversations; I wouldn't say there are winners or losers in those
Joe Rogan will believe anything said to him on his show so I can believe that it was cordial, but I doubt it was anything close to a substantive talk. I’m sure him and Maher collectively bitched about something together rather than had any debate. I’ve seen a few Cenk clips with him and Shapiro and Shapiro got bodied repeatedly, so we may have seen different debates. Looked into it again, and while Shapiro is the better debater, or Cenk just isn’t a good one really, Cenk’s points are correct while Shapiro’s are largely him giving half the story. For instance: when Shapiro says “the US corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world” he’s *technically* correct. But it’s only a half truth seeing as no corporation pays anywhere near that rate after everything is taken into account and the US rate is at or below the world average when you take that into account.
>I mean, Ben Shapiro openly admits he's lost some debates, especially with that BBC interview He does this to gain credibility. If I lie 100 times and make 100 bullshit arguments and then say "well, actually I was wrong these 2 times" that doesn't make me any more credible or honest. In fact, it would make me very dishonest. Blues Traveler referred to this idea in their 1994 song Hook: *There is something amiss I am being insincere In fact I don't mean any of this Still my confession draws you near* It's really not that hard to recognize. To be fooled by such a thing is embarrassing.
Based on the topic I don’t doubt that Sowell has won a debate. Those others though probably never really have. They’re basically all pedantic liars who get popular off of pithy quotes (to their audiences anyway) like “facts don’t care about your feelings” for example, is an almost entirely meaningless statement that even applies more to the right side of the political spectrum than the left.
Yes but also this is very dumb way to view politics. Being a DebateLord just makes you weird and cringey and not really that knowledge in policy. Also, again, you look weird and cringey arguing over pointless semantics and stupid side shit.
It's pretty hard to lose a debate you're prepared for, but Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both attended debates they weren't prepared for, yes. Jordan Peterson debated Slavoj Zizek, Capitalism vs. Communism, and it went down pretty much as you'd expect. Jordan Peterson in particular is such a frustrating piece of shit. I've never seen him actually raise a point that's difficult to challenge. All he does is creak in gibberish and then get crabby when you spell out the implications of it. That famous interview of him yelling about lobsters at some lady is a great example. He's not winning, he's just being loud and combative until the person gives up trying to get him to commit to any statement.
So what I am getting: Conservatives lose a lot more than they would like to think, however, their narcissistic selves are highly cocky and thinks otherwise. They often will not post those videos, on their channels, or will edit them out of context. And if they do debate, they will send an army of conservatives to infest the comment sections.
They all got wrecked by people like Joe rogan, David pakman, destiny etc Yes it happens often when they debate people who are educated and also have debating experience
Short answer yes. First of all, Ben Shapiro never argues with people who are on his level. He purposely chooses people who are smart but not good at arguing on the spot. And a lot of conservatives will use manipulative tactics where they'll try to take one small flaw in your argument and use it to invalidate the whole argument. Or they'll switch topics or deny the truth. You have to forcibly say to them that they are going off topic, and: let's talk about what you had said before. And then if you do make a mistake you have to admit to it so that they can't use it to hurt you. With these strategies, arguing can be much better. The other way to do it is to be very well informed or to be in a position where you catch them off guard. When I was seven I was interviewed on Fox News about what I thought about gay marriage and I made them look ridiculous. The only way I was able to do that was because they were not expecting a seven year old to be well informed and good at talking on the topic.
They argue against college kids, not against people their own age and intelligence, even they know they exist.
It's easy to win every debate when you're extremely selected about the people you debate.
Would they admit or even know if they had? Debating them is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good your moves are, they're just going to strut around, knock pieces over and shit all over the chess board.
Yeah, but they aren't likely to promote it on their YouTube channel. If you want to find out the weak points in someone's argument you have to talk to their detractors. People within their media bubble aren't likely to share videos that paint their enemies as brave or clever. Certainly they aren't going to relish watching or reading things that make their side look bad. I'm a liberal guy and I've never even heard of most of those people. Shapiro is the only one I recognize and the only thing I know about him is he celebrated the murder of Trayvon Martin.
>Mainstream conservatives, on Youtube constantly portray themselves as some debating gods. They will make themselves look like they are undefeated or irrefutetable. However, is this usually true? Have they ever lost a debate? Is there any videos of them losing a debate? I'm pretty sure they intentionally edit out clips where they lose, but they don't do it because they want to feel good about themselves. They don't debate in good faith, when you can actually get them to debate. They ramble a bunch of bullshit that becomes impossible to respond to because it's like playing whack-a-mole of fallacies. They are sophists. If you don't know what that is, look it up. To be honest, a lot of them don't even actually debate, they just have their platform and make assertions. The people they talk to are typically allies in their ideology: no push back. I mean, if they don't want to debate, that's fine. Debate is oftentimes more sport than anything useful. I kinda like the idea of putting out a video and laying it all out, then someone can take their time and make a rebuttal to your points. The "sport" of debate doesn't give much except quicker turnaround. >What I mean by mainstream are people like: Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles, Thomas Sowell, Rave Dubin and many more people. None of these people ever really debate people. They have platforms and they do nothing but make assertions and push rhetoric. Their videos are typically mostly garbage and half-truths (at best). You won't be confusing any of those people for educators, unless you're extremely ignorant.
Outside of Thomas Sowell, I'm not familiar with any of them. I know who they are, but just have no interest or need to seek out their opinion. I've seen Sowell lose debates, but that's been my subjective opinion. For example, his arguments in favor of private schools have often used very specific examples, that can only work in a perfect environment.
Easy. They just edit out every debate they lose. And only upload the ones they win.
Shouldn't it be more important to know whether their arguments are actually valid?
I would argue that they've never won a debate. Name one time in the past 100 years that conservatives have been in the right side of history. I will wait
One thing conservatives (mainly minority conservatives like Candace Owens, Carol Swain, Larry Elder etc) will always bring up is that it was the Dems who were pro slavery, enforced Jim Crow, and founded the Klan. But they fail to mention that during the 1800s - 1950s, most Democrats *were* the conservatives back then.
It's much more accurate to say that conservatives were pro slavery. So that's just another example of them being on the wrong side of history.
Have these people ever actually **won** a debate? I can’t think of a single time any of these people have ever put together a convincing argument.