A few months back, I had a little dialogue with a pacifist on the Russia/Ukraine war. He claimed that no one was willing to debate him, so that kind of proved he was right.

I pointed out to him that formal debates are mostly about making rebuttals and refutations of points made previously. And then their are the counter points to those rebuttals and refutations. When there are no rebuttals or refutations, the other side wins the debating point.

I then offered several rebuttals to his message. The most important being stopping military aid to Ukraine would mean the Russians will take over Ukraine (again) and the Ukrainians don't want that.

I challenged him to counter these points.

He did not respond at all.

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I was on my university debate club. While I was usually outclassed by faster thinkers than I, my time there was a good investment. Sometimes I was a judge, which required an immense amount of listening to figure out who scored the points.

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Unfortunately, there are many issues where our "side opposites" refuse to engage in rebuttals and refutations, let alone credible rebuttals and refutations.

I recently published a Medium article called "I am a Petroleum Engineer." I got blasted by an environmentalist who did not read anything past that title.