Rootclaim does judged debates with $100,000 wagers and likes Bayesian probability math. They lost their first debate about whether COVID came from a lab leak (their view) or from animal-to-human transmission. They paid but didn't change their minds, challenged the guy to a rematch with another $100,000 wager and a different debate format (he declined), and are still challenging the public to debate it for $100,000. They did a live debate but now think they should have done a text debate with a tree structure (done as nested bullet points), mid-debate feedback from judges, and word count limits.
Judged debates are interesting to me because I kind of like the idea but I don't think they work well when basic premises are being debated. For example, I don't see how to get fair judges for a debate about Popperian vs. Bayesian epistemology. If a lot of basic premises are shared between all debaters and all judges, then judged debates can work OK. If people agree on epistemology and are just debating a political topic, then judged debates can work better. The topics Rootclaim is interested in debating seem reasonably suitable for judged debates, but the philosophical premises I disagree with Rootclaim about do not.
I like the idea of debates with wagers but I think $100,000 is too large in general. That size excludes most people. Wouldn't it be better to have a lot more debates with lower stakes instead of just one high stakes debate so far? I'd be happy to have some $100 debates with people. But without judges, how do you decide who wins? You can use an honor system. If either side concedes, they pay. If someone unilaterally leaves the debate, they have to write a concluding statement and answer some followup questions, or they pay. If someone breaks a clear, objective debate rule, they pay. In many cases, neither side will pay, but I think that's OK, especially since the stakes aren't that high anyway. I see many advantages to this instead of $0 debates (and some disadvantages too).
Is an honor system effective? I think it's moderately effective when the stakes aren't too high and people have a reputation: a lot of fans, a lot of karma points, a long posting history, paying clients, academic credentials, etc. I don't think an honor system is very effective with fresh anonymous accounts, or amateurs with no track record or reputation using their real names, but that isn't necessarily important. I think it can be reasonable to offer a one-sided bounty for debates: if anyone can beat me in a debate, I'll pay them. If that's reasonable, then it also seems OK to have wagers where you're not confident the other person will actually pay if they lose.
Rootclaim posted an article titled Every Logical Argument You Ever Made Was Wrong. The article contains some decent points about how many premises are false. It concludes that we should give up on using deductive logic and focus on probabilities instead. I disagree. Logic being difficult to use effectively does not imply that we should give up on it. Maybe some people are using it well even if most aren't. Maybe many people are using it well sometimes; no comprehensive study was attempted; just a few examples were criticized which don't fairly represent all types of real world usage. Maybe no one is using logic well currently but we should try to solve that problem instead of rejecting logic.
Although I haven't investigated, I'm doubtful that the math underlying their probability work avoids all uses of deductive logic anywhere in it or its premises. Rigorous math tends to be closely connected with logic.
In the comment section of the article, Jon wrote:
This essay is wildly wrong. When premises are untrue, the argument is unsound, not invalid. Validity refers to the formal relationship between terms, and is always defined hypothetically, “…if the premises are true…” Unsound arguments can be formally valid, but have untrue or questionable premises. For example, “Spot is a dog. All dogs have fleas. Spot has fleas” is formally valid, but likely unsound, because the premise “All dogs have fleas” is probably false.
Rebecca, who appears to be affiliated with Rootclaim, replied:
Thanks for commenting, Jon.
As you can tell, we don’t care much for logical reasoning, so we don’t really bother with the formal terms. Please interpret words using their normal spoken meaning.
I think this attitude is really bad. How did they decide that logical reasoning is bad if they never learned much about it and don't know the basic terminology? Shouldn't they have expertise at logic before evaluating and dismissing it?
Messages