Debate experiments at The Curve, LessOnline and Manifest

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2025·LessWrong·lesswrong.com/posts/J5JvhFj3PMA3pnpnu/debate-experiments-...

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Nathan Young

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Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.

Rating inherited from publication venue: LessWrong

Peripheral to AI safety but relevant to EA/rationalist community epistemics and improving discourse quality at events like LessOnline and Manifest; may interest those working on AI safety debate as a technical alignment method.

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lesswrong

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LessOnlinePublic DiscourseWorld Modeling

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Importance: 22/100blog postcommentary

Summary

Nathan Young documents experiments with alternative debate formats aimed at improving discourse quality, focusing on the insight that debaters' status-seeking behavior undermines genuine intellectual engagement. His key finding is that 'courtly' role-based formats (king, knight, fool) show promise by redistributing status away from debaters, encouraging more substantive discussion.

Key Points

•Traditional debate formats fail because participants prioritize personal status over genuine intellectual engagement, leading to defensive posturing rather than truth-seeking.
•Courtly debate format assigns roles (king, queen, knight, fool) to depersonalize arguments and reduce ego investment in positions.
•Structured moderation experiments at The Curve showed mixed results; debates took too long to reach substantive disagreements.
•Role-based formats functioned more like collaborative role-play games, which appeared to reduce debaters' attachment to their own positions.
•Format design is identified as a key lever for improving public discourse quality, with format choice significantly shaping debate outcomes.

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# Debate experiments at The Curve, LessOnline and Manifest
By Nathan Young
Published: 2025-06-13
I like debate. I have done for years. So I have been slowly trying to improve it. Here is a set of theories I had and things, experiments I've run so far.

**Theory: Any debates are good.**
---------------------------------

Are any debates actually good at all? Should I give up?

**Test:** Watch different debates.

**Evidence:** I much prefer some debates to others.

Good debates:

*   [Dr. Richard Carrier andDr. Michael Licona](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IpKHdVLZb4&t=11s). I like how they chat to one another.
*   [Destiny and Ben Shapiro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYrdMjVXyNg). I recall liking this one. I remember them as having good chemistry.
*   Jubilee’s “[Surrounded](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukk2gULncFw&list=PLBVNJo7nhINQ6qGkFlgtK-0GW0_NOS4k7)” debates. I love an experimental format and these get a lot of different arguments in a short amount of time[^t5l1ydeu2uf].

Bad debates:

*   [Finkelstein, Destiny and M. Rabbani & Benny Morris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs). Long and acrimonious. I think Lex Fridman is deeply guilty of the “I’ll just let them talk it out” school of debate. I think this is lazy.
*   Most things with William Lane Craig. Craig is an excellent debater on theology. I’m not sure I recall him ever losing. But his debates always hinge on niche points or technical arguments I don’t care about.
*   Anything with Jordan B. Peterson. Like trying to nail a cake to a wall.
*   Presidential debates. Trump in particular can lie with no cost at all, so he does.

Unclear:

*   [Ezra Klein, Sam Harris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsr7Rv8XnIk). Bad that they don’t understand one another, but pretty interesting as a historical artefact to see two clever men who I like really fail to understand one another for very ~2018 culture war reasons.
*   [Matt Dillahunty, Matthew Adelstein](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHxAw5-RXIw) (aka [Bentham's Bulldog](https://open.substack.com/users/72790079-benthams-bulldog?utm_source=mentions)). Dillahunty is sloppy but somehow his audience think he’s making good points. Frustrating to watch.

**Status:** Theory survived attempted falsification[^916dlddrqz].

**Theory: The format is the problem.**
--------------------------------------

**Test:** Run some different debate formats (see next).

**Theory: Debates are bad because debaters focus on their own status.**
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

They have to focus on how they appear to the audience and this stops them admitting points where they are wrong.

**Test 1:** Find ways to protect the status of the debaters

**Evidence**:

I tried running two debates like this at The Curve ([Daniel Kokatajlo vs. Sayash Kapoor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVFAJQryzk8); [Dean W. Ball vs. Gabriel Weil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfOlxBvNSlg)). I tried to moderate a bit more strongly

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