Debating and philosophy

Is reading philosophy a means to achieving great debating skills? Or is my best bet autistically memorizing all statistics in the world?
>inb4 my grandfathers are ash meme

Bump

Read philosophy, economics, and history.
Then based on your readings and your personal views establish a position. If you are knowledgeable on these subjects and you understand your own position you should have no problem destroying others positions much like Ben Shapiro.

dat resting jew face

Very anti-semetic

very anti-semiotic

Even before picking up philosophy, the best thing you can do to improve your debate skills is to read about all the logical fallacies. And maybe cognitive biases if you are up for it. You will be amazed how often they come up in debates.

very anti

Read Rhetoric by Aristotle

Just debate like Socrates did. Ask a bunch of leading questions which are tangentially related to the point you want to prove, and then after your opponent agrees to them (you should only ask questions which your opponent has to agree with you on), shamble the points together to fit with your assertion. At this point the other person will leave because they think you're annoying and stupid, but you and all the little boys that you buttfuck will think that you made the greatest argument of all time and are the ultimate champion of logic, rather than a poor, hypocritical, old man who only asked a bunch of "wow so deep" questions rather than offering any insight or answers.

auntie vera?

Socrates didn't buttfuck did you even read Plato?

Oh wait of course not you're just an edgy contrarian trying to get (You)s

Veritasium

You might have misinterpritued what you read. If your talking about The Symposium, the story from Alcibiades shows that Socrates wouldn't fuck a boypussi just because it was sexy, he wasn't interested in a more rewarding relationship for both parties.

The point of the relationships was both for the sexual fufillment of the older man and for the education of the younger. In Phaedrus Socrates says boys should fuck the man who loves them and will help them to learn and get ahead in life. This is exactly what Socrate's relationship with Plato and all those other rich assholes from Phaedo was.

tl;dr Socrates buttfucked Plato

Learn rhetoric and how to confuse people, it will serve you far better in debate than any amount of actual knowledge.

No, debating is the means to achieving great debating skills. Reading helps though.

Not really. Debating relies more on using sources and being able to create a cohesive narrative that is persuasive; it's more rhetorical than philosophical. Philosophy on its own helps in identifying various commonly accepted fallacies and making sure your argument is at least logical, but it's far from being a core aspect of debate.

I recommend reading books on rhetoric if you want to become a skilled debater; the Greeks and Romans wrote a considerable amount on this topic.

Philosophy helps debating more than statistics, because facts don't help you form an argument. On the other hand, you can become an excellent debater without knowing a single fact, you just need to learn some moves (reversals, question assumptions, draw legitimate reductios ad absurdum, etc.)

That said, philosophy shouldn't just be about winning arguments, it should be about pursuit of truth, but w/e

Depends what you mean by 'debating', a great debater can be a sophist with incredible rhetorical ability. Normally, in a debate you're trying to reach the crowd, not the person you're speaking with. If you mean a casual conversation as debate then yeah, learning philosophy will help you there. But not everyone is after the truth and the truth is nuanced enough to it can go over most audience's heads.

That's not necessary in this day and age, if your debate is important and gets broadcasted, a lot of other people that have big followings can point out who's right and who's wrong, and the followers aren't really sheepish either, I really just want to fairly prove people I'm right, not to say that I have actually decided my position so far

That assumes that your average listener is going out of their way to understand who is right and who is wrong and that your 'commentators' with big followings are doing the work and taking the risk of presenting more nuanced views. Youtube Channels with the most in-depth look at higher level concepts don't tend to have big followings; they're too specialized.

Real time debating = dogshit

This post personifies why real time debating is shit. If winning an argument comes down to using tricks, then you may as well not even bother talking to the moron.

Yes

That's western philosophy solved.

Find your position on subjects, find any literature/opinions/stats/... that contradict it. Then learn to counter them.
Shapiro knows every counterargument better than his own arguments, he probably practices against his mirror every single day.

Didn't Socrates do the exact opposite to two dudes showing off their debating skills in one of the dialogues? Might have been the Elastic stranger though.

Eleatic*

Mr. Fantastic is now a philosopher