1 PC Chicken With Spaghetti vs 2 PC Chicken With Rice and the Flawed Nature of Debate

It is a warm Thursday night and the poll in the class group chat has multiple updates. I click the chat head with smug certainty, confident that the result remained what it was a few hours ago: one in favor of my choice. How wrong I was. It was a tie. Confused, infuriated, and betrayed, I stare into the distance and start to ponder whether or not this world is truly capable of justice. Turns out, I wasn't the only one outraged by the outcome of the poll: some of my classmates were, too. Each greatly impassioned and equipped with a burning desire to defend their choice, a debate on what to collectively order as a class from Jollibee for dinner for the upcoming Pisay Night ensues.

There were two teams to this chaos: Team 1 pc Chicken with Spaghetti (no rice) and Team 2 pc Chicken with Rice. Team 1 argued that Chicken with Spaghetti offered more variety; Team 2 argued that two pieces of chicken were much more fulfilling and therefore, more worth one's money. Team 1 believed that life is all about not caring about the pasta-induced carb intake, taking chances, and living in the moment; Team 2 laid out the nutritional value of rice. Friendships hung by a thread as students switched allegiances from one option to another. For the next two hours, points emphasizing economics, rationality, pubescent hormones, authoritarianism, Filipino culture, and love were brought up in an intense Messenger war of relentless keyboard pounding and high-speed Google searching. Nobody was giving in, nobody was giving up.

While the debate was a lighthearted attempt at making the isolation of the long weekend more bearable, one cannot help but marvel at the fascinating, but otherwise flawed nature of human argument.

In a video with Big Think, Bo Seo, a two-time world debate champion and Harvard's former debate coach, expounds on the fundamentals of building a better argument by trying to understand where the opposition is coming from. "So much of debate is an exercise in certainty. It's about spending- sometimes weeks- researching your side of the case, coming up with the best possible arguments that you can to sell the truth of your side to the listener. But in the last moments before a debater goes on stage, they know to take out a new sheet of paper and to put themselves in their opponent's shoes, and write the four best arguments for the opposing side. They know also to look over their case again, this time through the eyes of someone who fervently disagrees with them to identify all of the flaws and the criticisms that could be leveled against them."

More than anything, Seo understands that debate is an act of finding the humanity in disagreements.

We (and by we, I mean people who like to charge headfirst into any indication of a possible dispute) all think that the point of a debate is to prove the other side wrong and that we are right. However, its beauty lies in the simple fact that we get to do it. It is in the undertaking of debate that our self-assuredness gets questioned, and we become open to things we previously didn't side with. Debate, at least its informal counterpart, is not about proving who's right or wrong; it is about engaging in meaningful discourse with people whose opinions challenge our beliefs.

Our flawed, inefficient, and occasionally hostile execution of debate comes from our flawed, inefficient, and occasionally hostile understanding of debate.

It is imperative to note that debate is first and foremost a conversation. When we talk with other people, it is in the hope that they will take the time to hear us out and actually consider what we have to say. Nobody goes striking up a conversation with someone praying they get rejected. Debate works the same way. When two opposing sides present their arguments in a clear and logical manner, it is with the intention of convincing the other that the points they have worked so hard to lay out have validity. In more ways than one, debate is just a bunch of people aching to be heard and understood by people who are also aching to be heard and understood. "Here is my argument. Here are the ideas I have tirelessly curated in order to make it easier for you to understand my viewpoint. Do with this information what you will, just please hear me out. There is nothing I desire more in this world than for you to acknowledge the hard-earned logic in my reasoning and consider, even for just a second, that I warrant some sort of credit in accomplishing so. Pick me. Choose me. Love me."

In being open to what other people have to say, we become more receptive of their truth. Because whether we like it or not, debate is founded on the principle that what we consider as true may not necessarily reflect what other people view as true. The subjectivity of truth, in a sense, is what makes debate something worth our time. While obviously, this notion is not all-encompassing, considering there are topics that still exist under the very objective umbrella of science, law, society, and the like, arguments that deal with emotions, personal sentiments, and life experiences are often shaped by our individual understanding of truth and the moments we have lived through which led us to believe those truths. Therefore, bombarding the other party with facts and figures (no matter how well-researched they are) in an attempt to change their minds is pointless because we will never get to truly grasp the worldview they possess which has so greatly influenced their perception of and opinion on a certain topic. What makes humans so unique is the fact that we are. We will never think the same thoughts, experience the same things, or make the same decisions. Debate is about discussing those differences, and, at the same time, setting them aside, remaining resolute in your stand but also recognizing the substance in what other people are saying.

At the end of the day, debate is an exercise in humanity. What a debater wants (or you know, what really, anyone wants) is to be listened to. To rest assured that we have understood their thoughts so well that we can refute them. To leave the debate knowing that whether or not they came out victorious in the end doesn't matter, that they have won the bigger prize- to have spoken and have been listened to. When the burning enthusiasm has subsided and our judgment is no longer clouded by the all-consuming desire to have something to say, what we are left with are the words we've spoken, and whether or not they've impacted people positively is a decision we can choose to make. What we choose to do with our words and how we respond to the words of others matters, no matter how inconsequential it may seem. Debate teaches compassion. Debate encourages empathy. Debate induces humility.

Debate forces us to care. I know it's corny, but debate, when done right, can teach us to love. After all, what is love if not being fully known, in every stutter and every lisp and in every anger-fueled remark, and yet still fully understood?

P.S. 14 people voted 1 pc Chicken with Spaghetti (no rice) and the other 14 voted 2 pc Chicken with Rice. Everyone was able to get whichever option they preferred and we all lived happily ever after <33