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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Reading this (poor) debate between Steven Pinker and George Lakoff in the May Public Policy Research reminded me of a complaint I’ve long had about debates: the parties usually don’t seem to have talked much ahead of time to try to iron out their differences. They arrive to the debate knowing at most the other side’s previous published positions and arguments, and haven’t bothered to privately ask clarifying questions. I suspect this is because such debates function more as duels; the spectacle of combat is intended more to reveal relative mental abilities than to illuminate which conclusion is right.
I speak today on disagreement at a workshop here at Oxford where I’ve been visiting; here is the audio file.
Why Not Pre-Debate Talk?
To what degree has it been studied whether our affinity for debates and duels comes from a primate decision making social aesthetic. Something like an aesthetic of having an alpha male and a challenger male battling it out for group decision making supremacy (with a clique of women serving as a check against an alpha male running amuck and doing things which harm the health of the women and children of the group).
Could this be a type of genetic cognitive bias?
The debate you linked to is not free for everyone, but a Pinker-Lakoff debate is analyzed by a cognitive scientist and presented in full here. Well, not right there, but both of those are linked to from there.