Cheryl Says She's An Atheist

[koganbot]

Proposal for a social psychology experiment:

We'll use four separate, sizable groups of people, say 75 people in each group. (Not that I know if that amount is any good or not, or if we want our overall pool to be similar socioeconomically. I'm not a statistician.)

Ask each member of Group One:

What arguments would you use to try and persuade an

Comments

[koganbot]

This is interesting. I was on debate team freshman year in high school (this is 44 years ago), didn't do very well. I see the similarity regarding canned arguments versus responsive ones. One thing debate has, though, is a judge, who, if she's any good, will penalize a team for not responding to the other team's ideas (or at least for not giving a good reason for the nonresponse), for attacking straw men, etc. Also, it seemed to me at the time that, among other things, debaters had to either have a clear idea of the weaknesses in their position and know how to cover them up, or have no idea of the weaknesses in their position and for that reason be good at covering them up (the cynic in me says that the latter do even better than the former).

One difference in my experiment is that the subjects have to think about persuading the other party (rather than impressing a judge). Another is to see what increases uncertainty, and therefore (one hopes) produces a more flexible and creative response, and a thirst for knowledge.

Of course, uncertainty itself can be a debater's tool. One reason I tend to find Paul Krugman and Nate Silver persuasive is that they'll sometimes refer to alternate hypotheses or readings of the data, rather than just pushing for their favored reading. This, interestingly enough, tends to make me more prone to believe their favored reading, since they've seemed to have questioned it and tested it themselves. It also makes them more interesting to read. But in fact, I've not seen Silver's data and I'm far from mastering Krugman's ideas; but I'm prone to believe those two over their opponents anyway, not just 'cause I'm registered to Silver's and Krugman's political party but because of the way they play the uncertainty card.

While there isn't a direct analogy between debate and my experiment, I'd bet, not cynically, that people who become good at formal debate (as opposed to TV polemics) would also become good at responding to other people's actual ideas, recognizing when their own canned responses don't take account of those ideas, recognizing weak points in their own arguments, recognizing when there might be alternative hypotheses, and knowing when they could use more information, where there might be known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

[arbitrary_greay]

You're exactly right about the differences. I would use drastically different tactics in debating vs. persuasion, namely that I would play all sorts of unfair philosophy games and blow up inconsequential flaws into the judging points. In discussion, while I still love many of the concepts used in debate, I do try to avoid getting bogged down in semantics as the main point. (Semantics always make fun friendly tangential discussions) I also tend to make lots and lots of concessions that I wouldn't in competition for the sake of deepening discussion instead of butting heads over the same points over and over.

On the other hand, there is an aspect to persuading the opposing team, even though the judge is subject in this case, because there's no stronger reason for a team to win than forcing their opponents to concede something. (Although again, in a competitive mode I'd be aiming for something very small which I'd blow up to importance later) Or the next best thing, re-routing your own opponents' argument against them, as "Your arguments against the existence of god are false" isn't nearly as convincing as "Your arguments against the existence of god actually prove the existence of god."

But the differences are why the parallel to your experiment lies strictly in the first negative speech, before the competitive part of the activity exerts its influence. Ignoring teams being familiar with the others' preferred tactics and counter-arguments, (or, the subject's gender/ethnicity/social and economic status/history) the only thing that the negative theoretically knows going in is that the affirmative is the affirmative. (or, the subject is an atheist)
How the various groups in the experiment increase in the amount of information they have going in is akin to how debate teams increase in their knowledge of opposing teams and arguments over the course of the season. At the beginning of it, however, all they know are the arguments they have prepared going in, which is Group 1.

Krugman and Silver: I wouldn't call that uncertainty, but pre-emption. They deal with the common potential counter-arguments up front, which in competition would waste valuable time as both sides go through the motions making standard counter-arguments in the next speech. (And time-wasting is a tactic) This produces a better discussion as trivial-but-common counter-arguments are discarded and the conversation can move to unexplored ground.

[koganbot]

I probably didn't present Krugman and Silver all that well, but what they do that impresses me is not that they pre-empt standard counterarguments that they know are wrong (though they certainly do that, and it's good that they do), they also present counterarguments and alternative hypotheses that they believe have something to them. Which means that when they're very certain and aren't presenting counterarguments, I'm also likely to go with them (even when I don't understand what they're saying), since they're the sort to present uncertainty when it's warranted.

In any event, here's Krugman recently on an idea that he and some other people are playing with (technological advances making workers superfluous in some areas, hence an increase in inequality), and it's potentially very important, he says, but the idea is only in the formulation stage.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots

Additional factors or explanations cited:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/technology-or-monopoly-power

More detailed explanation, potential scenarios:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/technology-and-wages-the-analytics-wonkish

What's happening right now is that we are seeing a significant shift of income away from labor at the same time that we’re seeing new technologies that look, on a cursory overview, as if they’re capital-biased. So we could be looking at my technology B story above.
Supporting evidence:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/human-versus-physical-capital