Luke Thomas

I mean, I was never very good at it, but I did a little bit of time in it.

And what you realize that you don't, again, you don't, I'm not some like, you know, the king of debate that's far from it.

But what I mean is that when you do it enough, you realize that you have to have rules in place that everyone has to obey ahead of time.

And that it can, the system can easily be gamed where can, have I seen people who

who were superior debaters beat people who had all the evidence on their side?

I absolutely have.

People tend to view debate as the person who wins the debate was the one who was most closely expressing the truth.

No, it was the person who was doing the best advocacy for the point they were making.

And as long as you can understand and disentangle those two, I have no problem with it, but it can be difficult to do that.

And again, because you're dealing also in theory with subject matter expert, subject matter expert, and you're trying to play referee.

You don't know if what you have to assume what they're saying is true, but it's hard to know.

Have I given enough time to this position?

Am I more natural to be disinclined to this position?

How much ideological work do I have to, you know, to find this person convincing?

You're not even starting from a clean slate more.

And also how you referee this is,

I definitely would be open to the idea in certain cases, but it's kind of what I mentioned before.

I mean, listen, if there's a part where a big-time show asks you to go on there and advocate for it, it's probably in your interest in our current media environment to at least entertain that idea, and I would.

But I do think, and I will say this, I think the best kinds of debates are the ones that are structured.

They're not free-for-alls.