This is going to be a new series. I hope that I am not in over my head on this one. I enjoy the wide ranging debating that goes on in my local coffee clutch and want to share it with you. I am not going to focus on the content of the debate, but the structure of how different individuals conduct their debate. I have been watching both the content of the debate and how different individuals participate. It is this last aspect that has much of my interest. I think that the "patterns" used by my group must represent the general population and for that reason, I think they may be interesting to you. I may be a little sloppy in how I present this very different material, but humor me until you have read enough to form an opinion.
I have one friend who consistently uses the following structure when debating. When any position is presented that speaks to the behavior of any group, he always responds that he knows of a person who does not fit the median or average of that group. The implication is that the position about the group is in error. I have tagged this structure as the "out layer" principle. We all know that any statement about a group of people only applies to the median, average or a sub part of that group. I don't know of any aspect of a group that applies to 100% of the individuals in the group. One of my questions is "why/" a person would respond this way so consistently. It allows them to speak and join the debate, but does not add any thing meaningful to the debate. It allows them to avoid having or revealing an opinion about the subject of the debate. It is like a shield that prevents the other debaters from knowing what the person really thinks. Is it because the person is so insecure that they don't want the other debaters to find out what they really think? What do you think?
Here is another one. One in the group often sites facts or opinions from others, but does not reveal why they sited the facts or opinions. They never make it clear if they agree or not with the facts or opinions that they just sited. There seems to be an implication in how they site the material that they agree with it or feel that it is significant. Here again, this person shields or separates themselves from the materials that they just sited. Why would a person present material in a discussion without any objective on how the material should be used or how it applies to the discussion? I often see this same pattern on the News where someone on a panel debating an issue sites material without any effort to justify its quality or if they agree with the material.. One example was where a person in our group sited a news paper article that said that the professors in this one college taught an average of 9 semester credits. When challenged the person kept repeatedly siting the news paper numbers. They would never offered their personal opinion on whether they agreed with the number. Like any number sited, it is subject to error and the person siting the number owes to the group a position on what they feel is the quality or range or probability of the number being correct.
Here is another one. In the course of a discussion, a person often challenges one in the group for a personal opinion. Have you noticed how so many people can not "reveal" a personal opinion to a group in public? One day we had a medical doctor in our group and were talking about medical costs in the USA. A person in the group asked the doctor how long did they think it would take for a smart high school graduate to learn how to do common carpol tunnel surgery if that was the only think that they studied? The implication was that we should consider specialization more in medicine similar to what Henry Ford did with the assembly line. The doctor would not answer the question. When challenged further the doctor responded that it was not a logical question because current medical practice would not allow any doctor to do surgery unless they were a fully qualified doctor. This was clearly a theoretical question but the person's mind was so narrow that they could not deal with a theoretical possibility that was outside of their mind set. I know a lot of people do not like to answer theoretical questions for any number of reasons, but this was just a friendly debate among friends. What do you think?
I think that I have rambled on long enough for this first chapter. I have more. Tell me what you think. We need more thinking outside the box.
