Update your beliefs with a “Yes/​No debate”

[jorges]

Having read Julia Galef’s Scout Mindset, you probably want to hold your beliefs lightly and update them frequently. A shortcut to this can be finding people you disagree with (but still share a lot of common ground), and getting with them into fruitful discussions. By that, you capitalize from someone else’s research and reasoning and can faster update compared to doing the work alone.

This of course works only as long as you both share enough premises and you can trust the other’s abilities and good intentions in research and reasoning. So you want a method that both quickly exposes mismatches here and also gets to the core of your disagreement.

A good format for such fruitful discussions might be the Yes/​No debate. I created it a few years ago and already ran offline & online workshops, volunteer-based online debates and created a subreddit where everybody can start their debate. The format can help to find Double cruxes and Decision boundaries, if not resolve a disagreement between two people.

Having run and seen many debates with interested “laypeople” (who picked a topic mainly for testing the format), I’m now curious to see how well it may work with well-informed people that are deeper involved in the topic they discuss. This is why I’m writing this post.

What is a “Yes/​No debate”?

A “Yes/​No debate” is a discussion between two people based on yes/​no questions. Basically, one person always asks a Yes/​No question and the other responds to it with 5 possible answers:

• Yes

• No

• Depends

• False premise

• I don’t know.

An optional reasoning may be added, Depends and False premise require an elaboration.

Given the answer, either the same person may ask again or the roles switch. We switch roles to make sure both participants stay aligned (more on this below).

What are the benefits?

The main benefit of the method is that no argument or question gets ignored: Your counterpart has to answer you, and they have to do it in a clear and decisive way (one of the 5 responses).

But also you are challenged: you have to remember what your partner answered in order to ask a suitable follow-up question. Even more, you need to know clearly for yourself why you believe something.

Compared to other formats, both of you are constantly aligned: You only get to speak as long as the other can follow you. There is no wasting time by ’splaining points the other one already agrees to or that are irrelevant to them.

From the tests we ran, we know that with this method, 50% of the participants could better understand their counterpart’s position, compared to other debates they had.

One participant particularly enjoyed this:

It was surprisingly good to have a focal point to respond to. Even if they posted a wall of text explaining their position, the question was the only thing I felt required to address, so it took less mental energy to debate than it would have taken in a different format.

What questions to ask?

New Yes/​No debaters often find it difficult to phrase Yes/​No questions. In fact, even trained debaters find answering much easier than asking.

But if you know why you believe what you believe, it should not be that hard. Consider this (very simplified) argument tree on why someone took the Covid vaccine:

           I should take the Covid vaccine. 
          ↗                                ↖
    Covid is dangerous.             The vaccine is safe.
          ↑                                 ↑ 
Many people die from Covid.     Few people die from the vaccine.

The argument tree contains claims (nodes) and conclusions (edges). If you met someone who disagrees with the root claim (“I should take the Covid vaccine.”), they must disagree with at least one of the sub-claims or conclusions.

So to find that mismatch, you may traverse the argument tree by asking:

• Do you agree that many people die from Covid?

• Does this mean that Covid is dangerous?

• Do you agree that few people die from the vaccine?

• Does this mean that the vaccine is safe?

• Does from both follow that you should take the vaccine?

Again, if they disagree with the core claim, at least one of the answers must be a No. Finding that spot in the tree helps you a lot: You then have a new disagreement but a more specific one (on which you can apply the Yes/​No format again, like a recursion).

This may remind you of the Double crux method, which can be summarized as: Find relevant pillars of your and your partner’s beliefs and dig deeper until you find claims that can be easier fact-checked.

And it may also remind you of Aumann’s agreement theorem, which I like to summarize as:

If you know what I know (nodes /​ claims /​ information) & we’re both rational (edges /​ conclusions /​ reasoning), we must agree.

or even shorter:

$$Sameinformation+Samereasoning=Sameconclusions$$

Reversedly: if we don’t come up with the same conclusion, we do not share the same information and/​or do not apply the same reasoning.^[1]

Where to debate?

There is already a subreddit r/​YesNoDebate where everyone can start a new debate or join an existing one. As there are already 100+ members, your stick will likely be picked up.

If you already know someone you share a lot of common ground with but still disagree with on some final conclusion, I might also facilitate a debate between you two. We can then use any suitable channel, be it Twitter or even a private one.

Interested?

As written at the beginning, after having run trails with volunteers and in workshops with random topics, I’d now love to see how well this format works when people use it with topics they are better informed and care about – which probably many readers here do!

So if you want to update your beliefs on e.g. longtermism, priority of AI risk, veganism, wild animal welfare or any other idea, then you may:

• start a new or join an existing debate in r/​YesNoDebate

• comment or message me if you want me to guide a debate with someone you already know, or if you know a group interested in me giving an (online) workshop (like this one).

• fill out this form with a list of controversial ideas within EA, to be matched for a debate with someone disagreeing with you.

P.S.: I will also be present at EAGxRotterdam and happy to meet up.

1. ^

   At this point, people often object: But what about different values? Can’t they be a source of a disagreement? My answer to this: (Different) values are also results of information and reasoning. E.g. if you value human life differently than animal life then this is eventually based on the information you have about human and animal life.

[Noah Scales]

Hi, thank you for sharing this here.

I went through all your materials, the website, the powerpoint, and the subreddit arguments.I understand the importance of moderation in some combinations of questions and answers.

Participants can disagree on sources and facts and then face an irreconcilable disagreement, and I am curious how moderators handle that or you intend the process to handle that.

[jorges]

Thanks for taking interest in the project! About your question: I’m trying to think of an example to better answer it.

So let’s say I’ve started a discussion with someone who disagrees with taking the Covid vaccine. And we get to a point where they don’t believe the Covid stats because they don’t trust the CDC.

Then at this point, I could either continue debating whether the CDC is trustworthy, or I simply leave it there because I realize that this is someone I do not share enough common ground with. (There would be still a benefit: My disagreement would be much more informed now.)

In any case I am sure that a moderator who would intervene and say “You have to trust the CDC!” will not be helpful to the disbeliever.

However, there are situation where I think a moderation could be necessary:

• when the required conditions at Depends were not delivered,

• or the false premise at False premise is missing.

Let’s see if and how we get there.

[Noah Scales]

Thanks, Jorges. I have no plans to start a debate about Covid, and I am triple-vaxxed, so no objections here to vaccines. My other thoughts about SARS-CoV-2 infections are not suitable for this forum I think.

Your method is interesting. Have you thought about how you might implement it with a computer partner that helps you explore or develop knowledge? If applied faithfully, it might be an effective learning method.

On a different topic, one way to cheat this system is to claim “I don’t know” a lot. For example, “Is X true?” “I don’t know” “What about Y?” “I don’t know” … where the person sabotages the debate by claiming to know too little to have a certain point of view.

Another way is to select “depends” conditions in some irrational way. For example, “Is X true?” “Well, if Y is right, but not if Z is right” “Is Y right?” “Yes” “but earlier you said Z is right” “That’s true” “So is X true or not?” “It depends” (EDIT:this would be when Y and Z are contradictory)

Have you encountered those problems? If so, how do you handle them?

How do you use this with people who start refusing straightforward answers, but instead offer probabilities? For example, “Is X true?” “There’s a 51% chance that X is true.” “What about Y, is Y right?” “There’s a 30% chance that Y is true.” “And Z?” “Oh, 80% chance there” …

EDIT: what do you think demonstrates a good-faith debate partner, someone who will follow the rules and go through the process, that is, what evidence signals such a partner, before the debate begins?

[jorges]

Hi Noah! Thank you for your questions and thoughts around my idea. And sorry for not replying earlier, I simply hadn’t comment notifications turned on.

Your method is interesting. Have you thought about how you might implement it with a computer partner that helps you explore or develop knowledge? If applied faithfully, it might be an effective learning method.

That sounds interesting and no, haven’t thought about it yet. I guess it would need some powerful AI behind it, that would be able to deeply parse the questions and get their meanings. Something I don’t if it would be easily available at the moment.

On a different topic, one way to cheat this system …

Regarding your thoughts about cheating in general: Yes, it is clearly possible in this format to act in a bad way and thus prevent it from being insightful. My pitch is not that this format will debunk “evil” actors.

It is rather for two people who genuinely believe what they believe but at the same time have Scout Mindset and honestly want to find out why and how someone else might believe something different.

Another way is to select “depends” conditions in some irrational way.

I see. My ad-hoc approach would be here to call them out once I notice such an inconsistency: “Do you agree that saying /​ agreeing to … is inconsistent?”

Have you encountered those problems? If so, how do you handle them?

No, I haven’t seen or had debates with such “unfaithful” debaters yet.

How do you use this with people who start refusing straightforward answers, but instead offer probabilities? For example, “Is X true?” “There’s a 51% chance that X is true.”

That’s actually a nice idea! :) I’d totally “allow” such answers, if this is a way the debater wants to answer them and convey their beliefs. Regarding “who may ask next then?” I’d say: it’s up to the 2 debaters to find a rule. A reasonable one could be “count > =50% as a Yes, thus keep the roles then”.

what do you think demonstrates a good-faith debate partner, someone who will follow the rules and go through the process, that is, what evidence signals such a partner, before the debate begins?

Before the debate begins? Mhm, that’s a hard question. But it’s probably not one you need to answer because anytime during the debate, you can simply stop it once you notice your partner is not really helpful and not giving you enough insights.

To be clear: This format is not for “winning something”, or for “playing well”. It’s a suggested framework that people can commit to and then use it as long (or as short) as they want to.