How can a civil exchange of ideas not be healthy? Agreement is not a requisite to the definition. If such a debate feels unhealthy to you, I’m not sure what to say.

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password54321 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You would probably get more out of debating with an LLM. Let's have an LLM with a mic on every campus for these "healthy" debates that are progressing humanity.

Or maybe we can fine-tune an LLM with all his dialogue that has been recorded.

I guarantee in the latter case no one would care, because the showmanship aspect would be gone, which is what it really was about. Entertainment.

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esalman 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's unhealthy and double-standard-y about this is, people like Kirk in many quarters on the right have been talking about taking away constitutional rights like second amendment, maybe even first, for transgender people.

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KingMob 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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docmars 5 days ago | parent [-]

> Because his abhorrent ideas have already been rejected by civil society.

I hate to break it to you, but judging by the outcome of last year's election, this statement is provably false.

This means his opponents' ideas are by-and-large rejected by civil society, and the amazing irony is, he invited those ideas to be tested out in the open. Kirk gave a platform to ideas he and his audience abhor.

If someone's views are "too egregious" to be tested openly, it's almost always the case that the person suggesting this knows their own views wouldn't hold up. It's a tell that they know they've lost the argument, before it even happened. Calls for censorship and deplatforming are the key tell for how feeble a person is.

If their ideals are so great, why can't they survive under scrutiny?

	▲	KingMob 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I would retort that a sizable fraction of society isn't civil, the gleefully malevolent who long to punish minorities. And a larger fraction is ill-informed about the first part, due to platforming liars and psychopaths, like you suggest. Only part of Trump's voters thought this would be the outcome, but we're stuck with the results. Please, quit playing word games. We've moved past that, and America won't survive if you treat this like your high-school debate club.

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bdangubic 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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