I fully agree that it's garbage but I'll give a shaky defense of it, as someone who watches that stuff occasionally.
When you read books, listen to speeches or listen to friendly interviews, the argument is well structured and highly convincing. The argument is able to be laid out in its entirety. But it is laid out uncritically, you might say it's "biased." Liberals are obsessed with this, "all sides need to be heard" - as most of us on here, I grew up a liberal. The liberal blood continues to flow within me.
A debate lets the two wolves inside you fight it out, to expose things you may have taken for granted from one side. I liked watching Ben Burgis debate Prof. David "AnCap" Friedman, Milton Friedman's failson. Friedman took the POV of the dying liberal inside me, points I'm genuinely curious about that I haven't heard addressed properly from a leftist perspective. It's basically Hegelian dialectics on cocaine.
Another example is Hakim on Vaush's stream. Vaush made points that a small part of me may have considered, and Hakim laid out why he's wrong. I have to admit, a big part of it is my boredom and pathological thirst for meaningless online drama. Watching Vaush squirm and start agreeing with everything Hakim said was funny to me. I promise I'm in recovery, I'm trying to not enjoy this.
The vast majority of the time in any debate like this, especially during COVID, is fundamentally based more on communication skills, as opposed to substantive theories or empirical evidence. An endless amount of time is wasted, and the arguments are barely scratched on the surface.
at least you're aware that it's mostly nonsense and are already looking at things reasonably objectively. what i hate most about that shit is that people who may be willing to educate themselves end up getting shitty view points because whoever delivered them may have emerged as the 'victor' of the argument, despite having a shitty take, which then gets instilled into the audience.
Just judging by the fact that Vaush fans think Vaush "won the debate" with Hakim and therefore ML is cancelled, tells you all you need to know about how effective it is.
I have a lefty friend from high school who had cool takes last summer and now just reposts Vaush shit, it's tragic.
Also now that I mention it, I don't even think it's debate culture that's the root of this evil. I think what's much more concerning is that people get such a following without doing ANY of the intellectual work behind it. Vaush literally just picks a topic, reads some Wikipedia entries, draws an analogy (literally draws, on MS Paint) and that's his streams. Prager U is literally more well researched than Vaush is.
Actually Hasan Piker is similarly terrible in that regard, even though I'm torn on him as I agree with many of his takes. Idk man. Shit sucks.
I fully agree that it's garbage but I'll give a shaky defense of it, as someone who watches that stuff occasionally.
When you read books, listen to speeches or listen to friendly interviews, the argument is well structured and highly convincing. The argument is able to be laid out in its entirety. But it is laid out uncritically, you might say it's "biased." Liberals are obsessed with this, "all sides need to be heard" - as most of us on here, I grew up a liberal. The liberal blood continues to flow within me.
A debate lets the two wolves inside you fight it out, to expose things you may have taken for granted from one side. I liked watching Ben Burgis debate Prof. David "AnCap" Friedman, Milton Friedman's failson. Friedman took the POV of the dying liberal inside me, points I'm genuinely curious about that I haven't heard addressed properly from a leftist perspective. It's basically Hegelian dialectics on cocaine.
Another example is Hakim on Vaush's stream. Vaush made points that a small part of me may have considered, and Hakim laid out why he's wrong. I have to admit, a big part of it is my boredom and pathological thirst for meaningless online drama. Watching Vaush squirm and start agreeing with everything Hakim said was funny to me. I promise I'm in recovery, I'm trying to not enjoy this.
The vast majority of the time in any debate like this, especially during COVID, is fundamentally based more on communication skills, as opposed to substantive theories or empirical evidence. An endless amount of time is wasted, and the arguments are barely scratched on the surface.
Yet I consume :doomer:
at least you're aware that it's mostly nonsense and are already looking at things reasonably objectively. what i hate most about that shit is that people who may be willing to educate themselves end up getting shitty view points because whoever delivered them may have emerged as the 'victor' of the argument, despite having a shitty take, which then gets instilled into the audience.
Just judging by the fact that Vaush fans think Vaush "won the debate" with Hakim and therefore ML is cancelled, tells you all you need to know about how effective it is.
I have a lefty friend from high school who had cool takes last summer and now just reposts Vaush shit, it's tragic.
Also now that I mention it, I don't even think it's debate culture that's the root of this evil. I think what's much more concerning is that people get such a following without doing ANY of the intellectual work behind it. Vaush literally just picks a topic, reads some Wikipedia entries, draws an analogy (literally draws, on MS Paint) and that's his streams. Prager U is literally more well researched than Vaush is.
Actually Hasan Piker is similarly terrible in that regard, even though I'm torn on him as I agree with many of his takes. Idk man. Shit sucks.