Saturday 22 March 2014

Debating Resources Post Version 2 - Bigger, better and shinier



A book of wordsThis is a creatively named update on my previous Debating Resources Post. Which was itself an update of a stickied post on the Communist Case File Facebook Group, which crowdsources useful information for debaters. I am indebted to everyone who contributed. If you have any additions feel free to post them on the group, in the comments below, or email me at Johnwbh@Googlemail.com.



Debating Guides

The Practical Guide to Debating by Neill Harvey-Smith

Winning Debates - A Guide to Debating in the Style of the World Universities Debating Championships

The Birmingham Competitive debating guide, Kindly donated by James Bowker.


World Universities Debating Championship, Speaker Scale - Used at most BP style debating competitions as well.


General Debating resources

My crowdsourced glossary of debating terminology and jargon.

Googledoc of debating videos 

Shengwu Li’s Blog Lots of excellent advice on improving as a debater and meta-debate discussions.

The Monash Debating Review: (Academic articles on debating.)





Debatekeeper Android App - An excellent application that times debates and beeps at the appropriate times to indicate the beginning and end of protected time.

Useful Background Information Sources

Rob Marr's reading list for World Schools competitors, [Included with his kind permission.]

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has good introductory articles on pretty much everything
Personally I prefer The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is slightly more concise, but you’ll need to be on a university network.

The “Very Short Introductions” series is, as you might expect, a good introduction to many topics.

Best textbooks on every subject list on LessWrong.com.



Monash Debaters Association, Matter Guides

The Economist - Generally considered a good resource for concise analysis of political stories. At least one copy can be found at every debating competition.


Debating Blogs and other general community stuff



Miscellaneous interesting articles and websites

Some background on Sharia law: Tl;Dr: If you talk about Sharia as if it’s a universal codified legal system I will hit you with a stick.

The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom) - A good overview of arguments against libertarianism. Also applies to any general state intervention bad/good debate.

There are times when slippery slopes aren’t an awful argument

The Philosophers Beard

Slate Star Codex - Miscellaneous philosophical writing

LessWrong - Articles on human rationality

A cartoon guide to criminal law - (US based)




1 comment:

  1. This is a really interesting take on the social conversations we're all having. The idea of multiple channels of conversations is true, and confusing. :) It's likely that over time the conversations will migrate to a couple leading places.facebook

    ReplyDelete