This week, I would like to reflect back on the debate that we had to do for our Critical Thinking subject and mainly point out what I could have done better.
Our debate that we chose was titled “Hacking is a good thing”. Me and Carlston both liked the title name and both of us find hacking an interesting topic, however the problem we had with this topic was that we both were mostly in favour of hacking, but one of us had to debate against it.
Finally we decided that I would go against hacking and point out the reasons for why hacking was bad, while Carlston argues against this. I felt as if I was cheating myself, however I decided to take this as a challenge.
I went in great detail and found some very good research from reliable sources. During the debate I also felt that I came up with some very good arguments, however at one point, during my rebuttal, I could not think of a way to argue against one of the questions that Carlston asked me and so I did not even answer it but rather came up with more questions, arguments and case scenarios to counter this question. I felt lucky at the time that Carlston did not pressure me into answering that particular question, because I would have probably froze.
I actually enjoyed myself during the debate and overall it went pretty smooth, however I still felt a bit uneasy about myself after the debate ended, because I knew that it could’ve gone south really fast had Carlston been more assertive during the debate and this could have easily been avoided had I given as much time doing research for my rebuttal and what questions might be asked by Carlston as much as I did research on my arguments.
One other thing that I felt was missing in my debate were the lack of visuals and/or interactivity to engage with the audience. Without these I felt as if I was losing touch with the audience and that they were getting bored. I also believe that visuals make more impact and also helps solidify an argument. Steven Pinker sums this up perfectly:
Having experienced my first debate, I now know that I need to be better prepared and think ahead for what questions might arise during a debate which may weaken my arguments. I also need to engage more with the audience and in my opinion I think that this would be best achieved through visuals (images, statistics, videos) using of course reliable sources.
Melvin Magro 