Any kind of "live" argument will not reliably drive toward truth or create knowledge, whether it be in-person or online, moderated or freeform, between political candidates or pundits or podcasters or even between friends and family. Even worse, whether or not someone "wins" the argument will basically never have anything to do with whether their ideas are more rigorous or aligned with reality.

Live debates instead test the sides' skill at debating, which is a complex blend of charisma, quick-wittedness, memory, confidence, and often their ability to quickly come up with interesting lies.

What should we do instead if we want to drive toward truth? Asynchronous discussions prioritizing high-quality artifacts. Think "exchange of letters" rather than "phone call".

Artifacts vs performances

An artifact skill is measured by the quality of an artifact one can produce, such as a musical composition, a recipe, a photograph, a legal brief, a piece of software, or a persuasive essay. This means artifact skills are inherently asynchronous: participants can revise and redo their artifact as much as they want.

A performance skill is measured by the quality of a live performance, such as a musical performance, a cooking competition, a theater performance, a legal argument in court, or a live competitive programming event. These are inherently synchronous: there's a single "event" where participants need to "nail it" and only get one chance!

It's much easier for people to produce an artifact of high quality than a performance of high quality. (opens new window) More time is allowed for more ideas and attempts, many people than just "the performers" can contribute, and purely psychological problems such as nerves or panic are basically irrelevant.

Live debate is always going to be worse than artifact debate

In a live argument you have to get it right on the first try. You need to be calm, collected, connecting, empathetic, quick, clever, charismatic, and remember all your important facts. Doing this involves changing yourself, which is difficult to do, and has nothing to do with the quality of the ideas you espouse.

Producing a good debate artifact is much easier and can be done by anyone. A person can be cantankerous and impatient and rude and extremely unlikable. But with the right proof-readers and effort they can produce an artifact of the same quality as a certified rizz master (opens new window).

It is so much more achievable to produce an artifact of unimpeachable quality (one that considers all the questions in just the right proportion, and strikes just the right tone to best persuade the audience) than it is to give a debate performance of the same quality.

This means that since the quality of the delivery is basically equitable between all participants, the quality of the ideas is the thing that will rise to the top over time.

In an asynchronous debate the quality of the ideas is what shines. In a live debate the skill of the performers is what shines.

One group already does this...

Scientists and academics!

I'm not proposing anything crazy here, because "asynchronous discussion prioritizing high-quality artifacts" is exactly what actually interested scholars have done throughout history.

And guess what? They're doing a lot better at driving toward truth than all the fools who won a debate despite being embarrassingly wrong (opens new window).

So can we stop doing debates please?

I began watching the recent "Surrounded" with Sam Seder (opens new window), and when someone said "I don't remember exactly it's not like we can look this up right now" I just sighed and stopped watching. If our goal is to find out what ideas are most aligned with reality, then why wouldn't we prioritize looking up everything anytime there's even a shred of doubt?

We all need to stop proposing debates and weighing them at all when we are trying to figure out what's true. And when we find ourselves arguing with basically anyone, we need to stop and consider if we should instead just send them an essay (or book).

You might worry these artifact-oriented debates will be inaccessible since not everyone wants to read long documents. But I'll remind you that an "artifact" can be lots of things! Including very accessible things like video essays or infographics.

Getting people to stop doing this will be hard, because debate is popular! Humans are social animals and we love charisma competitions. We love skill competitions in general.

But we need to recognize that if we actually care about driving toward the truth, asynchronous discussions that prioritize high-quality artifacts are the way to go.