It’s definitely fair to worry about a format that is bad for your side, but that’s easy enough to address. “I’m very grateful for your invitation to discuss vaccines on your show. As you know, it’s been my life’s work to advance this life-saving area of research. I strenuously disagree with many of Mr. Kennedy’s public statements, and I’d welcome the opportunity to tell your audience why. That said, it’s very important to make this debate as informative as possible. To do that, I’d propose the following format: <some structured debate format that’s recorded in segments over several days to give an opportunity to do some research in between segments>.”
Whether the debate happens or not, who cares? If it happens, you present a convincing case to a large audience, if it doesn’t happen, you expressed your willingness to engage in good faith.
I am kind of on otatop/suzzer’s side here. The Gish Gallop is a formidable debating technique and it is difficult to defeat it in an unstructured debating environment, and next to impossible with a hostile moderator. Defeating it on Rogan would involve complaining about the number of new points Rogan is allowing the opponent to introduce, which immediately makes you a preppy little bitch complaining about the rules.
I was a big proponent of using Rogan as a platform circa the Bernie campaign, but the same thing that makes him such a great platform there (i.e. that he allows people to speak their minds with minimal intervention) makes him a bad platform for debating. If I was going to do it, I’d preferably just want to go on Rogan solo and address a maximum of like 5 points that RFK wanted to debate. Second choice would be to agree to a live debate but say we’ll stay within the realms of 5 points, to be specified beforehand. Going on for an open-ended debate is suicidal.
OK, but who cares if some hardcore antivaxxers listen to a debate and decide that, wouldntcha know it, the hardcore antivaxxer side wins? The point is to find people who aren’t committed to either side and convince them to shift to the side that is true. And to prevent the bad guys convincing those people to shift to the side of evil. If those people aren’t around, then nothing you say or do matters. But, to restate my main point, the idea that no one is persuadable about vaccines is cope to deal with the fact that no one wants to do the hard work of effectively persuading them.
It all depends. If a scientist is just grinding away at the ol’ science and producing results, then sure they shouldn’t be responsible for persuading the general public. A scientist that takes a leadership position at, say, the CDC, better be ready to communicate effectively with the public during a pandemic. Hypothetically speaking.
Yeah, this is exactly why you don’t go on a bad faith “debate show” like Joe Rogan and “debate” with an antivaxxer in a way that will be cartoonishly tilted against reality and toward antivaxxer fantasies. Even in your hopeful land full of persuadables, this would be a damned good way to turn about 100,000 persuadable people into antivaxxers.
Does anyone else remember when Donald Trump got the R nomination and then a whole bunch of great stuff happened because giving him exposure resulted in millions of persuadable voters realizing that the R party was Actually Bad? That worked out great, and in no way did platforming the Worst Person In America result in wide spread adoption of his hateful, ignorant ideas.
Surely we can’t expect every bureaucrat to have a social media pull on par with America’s biggest carnival barker. He’s doing a fine job presenting information in good faith to the public, it’s not his fault that a small minority of MAGA cultists don’t have the information literacy skills to process any of it. That’s not on him. If anything, that’s on Joe Rogan and the various grifting yambags who have been a cultural rot for decades.
The thing is is that “directionally right” is a great fall back because it’s take advantage of a good faith argument, that people don’t always know the exact numbers so we should cut them a little leeway to get their point across. Of course RFK’s estimates aren’t just kind of close, their magnitudes off and he gets to come up with whatever shocking number he wants to and then his supporters fall back to “directionally right”
“Winning” a bad-faith debate on a podcast is an extremely fringe skill set that only a few weird online freaks on the left are going to have. People who are good are condensing and presenting information to adults aren’t necessarily going to clown on guys like JFK Jr. It’s a ridiculous expectation to put on them.
I totally agree with you on that. I do think that different people have different levels of responsibility when dealing with the public. That doesn’t mean that any of them are solely responsible for overcoming all the challenges in dealing with public. My point, which isn’t really that profound, is that “scientists” is a huge freaking group of people with different obligations.
Yeah, for sure. This is basic division of labor stuff. Either the “scientist” here has to be a person specifically trained and skilled in public relations because that’s a role they chose, or you need a skilled representative like an AOC is that is a strong public advocate to take your message an run with it. It’s very easy to fix America, you just need 1000 AOCs and you need them all to run and win in critical congress seats.
Even in my modest profession as a pension actuary, there are great actuaries who you can’t put in front of a Board or a retiree to talk to them about pensions and retirement. And there are people like me on the end of the distribution curve that are good at talking to retirees and Boards and other humans about actuarial matters. If I seek or am put in a role that requires engagement with decision makers outside the profession than I am taking that mantle of responsibility. My personal failures wouldn’t be failures of the profession.
I don’t think there’s a clear cut answer. Plenty of reactionary bs has been put on the backfoot by famous “debates” mostly because the reactionary side came across as unhinged and unserious which I think RFK would come across as, but it takes a skilled communicator to do that, you can’t have any old person take the bait from reactionary cranks.
The biggest difference to me is that in scientific circles if someone is caught lying, or spouting nonsense, or knowingly pushing a disreputable or disproven source – that’s it. That person doesn’t get a seat at the serious table anymore. Reputation is everything.
In anti-vaxx circles, they just effortlessly move on to the next point from said person, ad infinitum. It’s your job to disentangle their lies, nonsense, and questionable sources – every single time, or you will get a football spiked in your face.
Joe Rogan literally berated a primatologist for telling him that no, there is not a race of 6’ tall chimps who walk upright and sleep on the ground. If the debate is going badly for RFK, Rogan will end it. If the scientist starts getting flustered, Rogan will do everything he can to amplify that. It’s a freeroll for RFK.
Also notice they aren’t inviting any of the twitter pro-vaxx expert guys who would absolutely destroy RFK.
Not everyone out there is so set in their beliefs, though. There must be value in putting out coherent messaging re: the safety of vaccines, if we think anti-vaxers going on Joe Rogan is harmful and can move the needle in the other direction.
Yeah, the way to do that though is to blast social media with your message and try to snag a bunch of the hypothetically persuadable people with your message, framed the way you want your message framed.
Going on Joe Rogan to speak the truth about vaccines in a “debate” with an antivaxxer is equivalent to voluntarily ceding the high ground to an opponent in a battle. No one is saying that people shouldn’t fight to spread the truth. But fight on your own terms.
Just in case anyone reading this is thinking about debating a crackpot on a famous podcast. Here are some important tips for how to debate from a former debater and coach.
Edit for readability:
I don’t care that you are an expert. You have not prepped for the debate. In college, we scouted. A lot. Knowing the subject matter is not enough, you need to know what your opponent is going to say and prepare specifically for that.
Prepping is not just scouting, but also preparing what you will say in response. Framing your argument is super important and thinking through what you’ll say is critical. Plan for way more than you think you need because you never know what direction it will go.
Your expertise will leave you in the heat of the moment. You will get tongue tied or forget an important point. The more you’re basically scripted the better. (But for a public debate, don’t be wooden)
Defense doesn’t win championships. If you let your opponent define the terms of debate and you are just responding, you can’t win. There will always be some crack that they can pry open. Instead, you need to define the terms and put them on the defensive from the start.
For any given thing your opponent might say there are a lot of responses. Don’t just go with the first one that occurs to you. Or even the intellectually deepest one. Go for the one that is easiest for you to win. …
… Novice debaters always had to get trained out of this. “I pushed this argument because it was right.” You’re right about a lot of things. Go for the argument you are winning, even if you’re right about other things.
Avoid distractions and reframing. Your opponent, if they are smart, will always try to reframe the debate in a way that they can win. Don’t let them do that, even if you think you can win the reframed debate. Control the conversation.
Maybe that’s enough for now. But, I’ll make this offer: if you are on the side of science and are going to debate someone in a public forum, reach out. I might be able to help.
Dr. Virginia Yonkers @Comprof1
Great thread and suggestions. Just 1 more: know who will “judge” your debate. What’s the criteria to win for them (know your audience)? You may win the debate but lose the secondary audience (who you are trying to persuade to your side which could be the press or general public).
On the last point, I don’t think you can let Rogan moderate. Or if you do, get the check upfront and be prepared to fight dirty. If that’s the arena you choose to go into, be willing to throw in a well-timed fuck you, Joe.
