Importance of Socratic Debate

My attitude regarding “debate” has varied considerably. Around this time last year, I stocked my hard drive full of theology debates featuring Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Christopher Hitchens, and a few more of my professional Heroes. The debates ranged from the theological to the paranormal, but they always featured two personalities: the proposition and the opposition.

 

Of course, debates like this are extremely interesting to listen to. Its fun to pump your fists in the air when your speaker throws a hard jab in the ring, and its even more fun to jaw-drop when the opponent makes an absurd point, or dodges a question. When you’re itching for a philosophical fight, listening to a debate can be one of the most enjoyable activities imaginable.

 

But do these debates really amount to any good? Headed off to my freshman year in college, my mind dramatically changed on this issue. In a typical auditorium, its safe to say that one large part of the audience is in support of one speaker, and the other is following the opposition. There may only be a handful of individuals who truly have not made up their mind on the issue at hand. Of course, this phenomenon is adequately supported above—I went in to all of these debates fully supporting Dawkins, Shermer, or Hitchens. Very rarely would I (as an audience member) concede to a good point from the opposition. Listening was more a game of “lets see how badly Dawkins embarrasses the other guy!” Its not too much to assume that the other side feels much the same way. Nobody’s mind is going to change in that auditorium, chances are. If anything, a debate polarizes the issue more.

One other issue arises from this kind of debate: false balance. Much in the same way that a newspaper will try to be “unbiased” by showing “both sides” of an issue, a formal debate legitimizes both sides, even if one is absolutely unfounded. For example, there are many debates exploring the contention between Evolution and Creationism. Creationism is a medieval mythology that is completely unsupported by ANY evidence. The multiple lines of empirical data supporting the 13 Billion year age of the universe and the indisputable evidence for Evolution and Natural Selection makes this argument completely one-sided. Every modern debate on this issue accomplishes the same thing: it legitimizes Biblical Creationism as an alternative theory to Science.

Creationism isn’t even a theory, its a MYTH, and a fairly bland one at that. The two halves of the myth don’t even make internal sense, and the idea that Humans are this guardian species who have inherited the earth is the most profound projection of our own Egoism in literature.

Clearly there are dangers in establishing a debate with an opposing viewpoint.

There’s another aspect to this idea I wanted to develop. Last week there was a loud-mouthed girl in my dorm hallway. She was a little drunk, and was obviously in the mood for an argument. When asked why she enjoyed arguing so much, she replied, “Well when somebody argues with me, they are wrong, and its my job to convince them otherwise; to show them that I am right.”

If this is the exact reason you don’t like arguments, I believe its safe to say that you are not alone. This definition of an argument is an exact, small-scale replica of the debate described above. Neither arguer is willing to change their view. They each fully believe they are right, and the entire point of the argument is to change the other person’s mind.

In that case, TO HELL WITH ARGUING! Everyone should search out their own truth…never to be challenged by anyone else…a complete, philosophical loop. Every person’s ideas should be respected, because every person has their own truth. We will live in harmony! Each man, woman, and child will be able to live at peace with themselves because they will never be told, “you are wrong.” …a beautiful state of cognitive stagnation and temporal bliss.

Okay, that obviously doesn’t work either. There has to be some middle ground…

This is where we find Socratic Debate. Socratic Debate works toward one goal: finding the big “T”: Truth. Call it what you will…truth, reality, philosophy…whatever it is, its the big one. We all just want to come a little closer to the truth. Hell, why do religions exist? Why do we have science? Why are some of the first artifacts discovered the figures of a Goddess? The answer is that people need to ask questions like “why?” and “how?” We yearn for the truth, no matter how you define it.

Socratic debate says, debate is a process. We have two viewpoints, a Thesis and an Antithesis. These two perspectives have their accuracies and inaccuracies, but hopefully by the end of the argument there will be a new understanding: a Synthesis of the two. The debate ends, and there is no loser. Both parties become closer to the truth. This is how science works, and this is how our species has developed into the thriving society we now form.

…and thats the last seal of the Apocalypse.

A terrible crime is being committed in our contemporary society. It goes against the most basic laws of nature and morality…our well has been poisoned by the urine of unfathomable abomination! The future of our society hangs in the balance, and yet here continues dastardly sins against the sanctity of marriage!!!!

I blame Steve Jobs.




Apparently now there is a dating site for Apple fans!! Zune, Zen, iRiver, and Dell owners look away, the streets will soon be rampant with iCouples walking around sticking earbuds in each other's orifices and fingering one another’s Pods and Pads in broad daylight!

 I don’t have anything in particular against Apple. I personally own a Sony Laptop and I quite prefer Windows and Open Source apps to Apple products, and I own a Zune HD which I absolutely love. Apple has given us many things: they reinvented the wheel, pioneered MP3 players, gave the physics lab at University of Illinois the SHITTIEST computers ever made, but also made some really cool new computers (even if it did take them forever to realize that hardware updates are a good idea.)

On the other hand, I find “religious” Apple fans to be the most annoying, arrogant, and biased people on the planet. I say religious because that’s what this has turned into. Every white plastic-wrapped piece of silicon and glass that comes out of the Apple factory is worshiped until the new model comes out…which is actually the same exact thing but they decided to put a camera into the pre-designated camera space.

Anyway, the story at hand really speaks for itself. Some fans are so hard-core that they wouldn’t think to date somebody who wasn’t as fanatical about Apple as they were.

You would think relationships should be based on commonalities concerning politics, or religion, or even friggin’ dog breading. Nope, not for an iDouch…

Why I Am A nerd

Okay, so truth be told I’m a bit of a nerd. Actually I’m a huge nerd. Here’s why:

Finals are coming up, and I can see sleepless nights and large pots of caffeinated Arabica beans rolling quickly over the horizon. In my last few days of relaxation I decided it would be fun to mess ar

ound with my computer, updating what I can and installing/deleting the stuff I need and don’t need.

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FW390 customized laptop. I love the thing like a little brother (although I have an actual little br

other whom I love more) and I spend a

great deal on it for both fun and education. I run Windows 7 Professional on it, and I have also partitioned the hard drive for Ubuntu Linux, which I used to use for small programming projects and as a small getaway from the world of Windows.

 

The new Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx distribution update came out last week, and just for fun before I had to start worrying about finals I decided to give it a try. Immediately I was blown away. This is the cleanest looking Linux release I have ever seen. Its finely rounded, easily accessible, very VERY easy to work with (installations are much easier, less coding, more double clicking) and straight-up gorgeous!

 

 Anyway, when I finally got around to restarting my computer and (sadly) going back to Windows, the computer would not reboot! What a bitch! I need this computer to study for finals (and to Facebook creep, etc.) What a terrible time for it to decide to crash. When I got down to figuring out what went wrong, it turned out that my Windows filesystem got corrupted somehow.

 

Luckily I have my Linux partition, so I reloaded that, backed up all of my files to my external hard drive, and then reinstalled Windows 7 with the cd. I took the occasion to perfect the relationship between my two operating systems, Ubuntu and Windows 7, and I decided that Ubuntu will become my primary OS. After all, it handles all the basic tasks I need to study, blog, and browse.

 

I installed Windows and all the programs I determined were necessary to my survival:

Opera, Firefox, Safari, Norton Anti-virus, Open Office, Evolution Mail, The Gimp 2.0, Blender, Guitar Pro, Fruity Loops, Mathematica, Windows Live Writer, Zune, and Total Media Theatre 3.

 

And then I did something I should have done a long time ago: BACKED EVERYTHING UP! Next time I run into this kind of trouble again, I’m going to be prepared. (Knowing how I like to tinker, chances are that this will happen again sometime in the future.)

On my Ubuntu desktop I installed the programs that I needed, and I was surprised at the level of improvement since the last time I visited the world of Linux. Skype is now compatible, as well as Opera. Also I discovered something incredibly awesome:

Because I plan on using Ubuntu as my primary OS, it must be fully integrated with blogging software, programming software, and my network connections. Ubuntu now automatically comes with Gwibber, an application that combines Facebook, Flickr and Twitter (and many other networks) as well as Evolution Mail; all built into the panel!

I needed a decent blog writer, and ScribeFire would have been fine, but I find it a little bit annoying that it is a Firefox plug-in. Firefox has been replaced by Opera as my browser-of-choice simply because Opera has a built in Bit-Torrent client and unparalleled speed. (Yes, faster than Safari. Don’t give me that “Apple is better than everything” bullshit.) What I really wanted to use was Windows Live Writer, which I have on my Windows partition, but will not run on Linux.

Here’s where my mind was blown. I know that this is old news, and this probably isn’t as exciting as I found it to be, but I installed Windows 7 as a Virtual Machine using VirtualBox OSE. This is AMAZING! While it has no connection to my real partitions (so running a program that needed to access my files would be ineffective), this setup is perfect for using Windows Life Writer.

So here’s the moral of the story:

   1. Backup your files so when you do something dumb and you break your expensive computer’s OS, you can still save your paper for your Scandinavian Literature class.

   2. If you aren’t afraid of the possible dangers of partitioning your hard drive incorrectly, try out Ubuntu sometime. With the new release of 10.04 Lucid Lynx, Linux has never been this easy or looked this good.

   3. I am a nerd, and this is not the first, nor the last time I have screwed something up on my computer that may or may not be repairable.

"Stop"? Really?

Apparently there has been some response to our artwork at the University of Illinois quad. According to the AAF blog post, a few individual members of the Muslim student group at UIUC were seen defacing our faces of Muhammad. The attempts at censoring the chalk images included erasing the figures with water, and this:

(photo credit: http://uiucatheists.blogspot.com/2010/05/update-campus-muslims-try-to-censor.html)

Unfortunately I missed out in seeing the response, I am actually home this weekend, attending the St. Francis prom with the beautiful Becky Solomon. I hope to at least see some of the Muhammad figures remaining when I return on Sunday, but if the Muslim student group has its way, all 150 chalk drawings may be erased. Possible but unlikely.

Again, if I understated it in my previous post, I am extremely excited by the participation and success in this project. I think we, as a team, did a great job supporting free speech and really making a statement that no belief, faith, or assertion is immune from the power of critical thinking and scrutiny.

Kudos to all those who made this possible!

It looks as though the event has caught the public eye, PZ Myers posted about the event here on his blog Pharyngula, be sure to read it!