Ben Shapiro vs Oxford Union
Thoughts on the Shapiro vs Oxford Union debate? I haven't listened to it closely but seems like the internet is flaming Oxford students for not putting up well-reasoned arguments. London peeps thoughts especially valued.
My thoughts (without having listened to it) are that I'm fairly cautious of what Shapiro puts out because he likes to play into his reputation of putting down woke college students, without context. Also, I'm not as surprised as the YT comments seem to be about the supposed weakness of the Oxford students' reasoning, because university education (speaking for the UK) has been massively democratized so plenty of average people walking in the top unis anyway.
I disagree with Ben on a lot of stuff and think he's definitely become more emotionally-driven with some of his recent DailyWire content I've seen regarding the conflict (somewhat understandable, he's an Orthodox Jew after all). That said, this and the Cambridge debate were completely embarrassing for the students. None of them even remotely came close to a decent response to anything he replied with and in multiple cases stated flat out falsehoods e.g. the chick who said the UK never bombed civilians in WWII against the Nazis (Dresden anyone?). A not small number of them essentially admitted that they don't believe the State of Israel has a right to exist and that Palestine should quite literally be liberated "from the river to the sea", basically admitting they support genocide just in the other direction. They were an unfortunate combination of immature, ill-informed, and unprepared which makes Ben look pretty good coming out of the debates (with the caveat he's debating what I think were all college students..).
I would be interested to see how he does against someone who's actually informed on these topics, isn't basically a child, and has shown in the past they're able to hold their own against prominent conservatives in a public debate e.g. Scott Horton from Antiwar.com or Dave Smith who hosts of PartofTheProblem (doubly interesting as he's also Jewish).
Great. I glanced thru that the Cambs debate was better, but I haven't seen. Will listen to them when I have the time and boredom.
Agreed. I personally do not see Ben as ANYTHING more than an entertainer. I would be surprised if any educated person would see him unironically as a 'public intellectual'. I think Ben knows this too, seeing as he actively stays in his circle of competence - debating and defeating college students instead of scholars and academics. But then again, destroying college kids is better for his business and his views so it could be part of a genuine media strategy.
The only party I'm disappointed in are the students. C'mon guys, Oxbridge? I expected more scholarly debate than dinner-style arguments. But then again - not exactly surprised, since I know many Oxbridge folk personally
Correct, hes an entertainer and would never debate a true muslim/jewish scholar. Without a doubt though Shapiro is a very effective debater, but most of the “clips of destroyed college students” is him deflecting questions about IDF/conflict and saying “hamas needs to be taken care of, end justify the means”. The students are not prepared for that but he is not exactly answering their question or adding intellectual thought. Just a loud voice “they must be eliminated” again again. Very effective debate tactic but if scoring as a debate not a way to get actual points. So if a student was replaced by shapiro they would lose points in an actual debate. Again Ben would not show up if an actual debate. His entire speech was on how the west sees the conflict and their value, nothing about actual politics of the region.
Look up the Islam is a peaceful relegion or not, to see a much better example of Oxford which also occurred this year so the students cannot be that dumb.
His performances in debates with people who stylize themselves as experts or public intellectuals is honestly about the same. The only difference is that the people he talks to there are just more self assured that their wrong ideas are correct.
Well, what parts was Ben wrong on? I don't care if you have 10 PhDs. Some of this stuff is hard to argue against. Take for example the conversation about Hamas locating in heavily populated areas. Ben, raised the question, well do terrorists have immunity if they locate in civilian areas?
Having a PhD doesn't do anything to help you answer that question. It seems like a logical fallacy to discredit someone's argument just because they are arguing against a weak opponent. Yes, maybe your opponent is weak but that doesn't make your statements untrue. And if you believe Ben's statements are untrue, then say which statements rather than pointing out that the opponent was weak - hence this can't be a good argument.
It seems like a version of the classic logical fallacy argument from authority. The arguement of some PhD is more correct because they are an educated public intellectual while Ben's argument cannot be good or right because he is not an authoritative figure.
Why can't someone be both an entertainer and an intellectual? He's factually correct in most of his discussions (in some cases presenting them with clear bias baked in) while certainly making some morally assumptive jumps here and there. Just because arguing from the right wing perspective is unpopular in academic circles doesn't invalidate his points. He's well-educated by most any standards, BA from UCLA and JD from Harvard Law.
I agree that he likely sees himself as an entertainer first. The younger content is what generates more engagement and an audience, and given he's running a media company trying to effectuate change in the conservative movement it's unsurprising that's where he spends the bulk of his time. I would caveat this though with that he has debated some scholars and intellectuals and resoundingly stomped them - he's inarguably good at debate - and many others outright refuse to even engage with him (again, likely due to the unpopularity of right wing politics within those circles and deliberate mischaracterization of him as far right, a Nazi, etc.).
Agreed. The quality has been slipping in academia as a whole, but it's particularly noticeable in the upper echelons of what was considered "higher education" that has moved away from focusing purely on merit and welcomed in people on the basis of identify/grievances. It's made these institutions noticeably weaker and doesn't bode well long-term if the trend continues.
Ben Shapiro has a lot of extremely silly takes but nobody can contest his ability to come up with strong arguments on his feet. Even how fast he speaks, he's just extremely gifted on that front
Lol no kidding, the dude sounds like he's permanently on 1.5x speed while mainlining adderall.
Define strong argument. Because generally speaking, from what I've seen, he likes to throw a bunch of wild unsupported assertions at someone very quickly and then hope they're so bamboozled by it that they don't stop to question him on it.
These celebrity debates are conventionally treated as 'show debates' (i.e. the Union puts them on to draw a crowd), so there is no reason to expect the quality of argumentation to be on par with a competitive varsity debate or a more rigorous academic setting.
I've always find the Oxford debates strange. In every example I have seen the students seem like they are kind of retarded. I mean I get that they are students and don't have shit for life experience. But one would expect more from a top global university.
Exactly. Anecdotally (and take this with a grain of salt), I was rlly shocked when I saw how many slackers there were at Oxbridge. Especially with how many degrees universities are pumping out nowadays - assuming 40% of people who get < 2.2 you can expect a high absolute number of idiots running around. However, the way I understand it, with an Oxford PPE education coupled with some years of professional experience, you can expect to be a pretty smart mature bloke. Imma give these students the benefit of the doubt for now, since expecting a literal undergrad to be mature or well-reasoned is kinda a paradox/ oxymoron of sorts.
Oh no, you can expect people this age to have those things. If you look back at history people that age were doing pretty intense things. The world has gotten so easy that adulthood has been delayed by almost a decade.
A few people have noted that these are just students. Perhaps, this is just my case but I was at the height of my game as a student when it came to debating these sorts of things. I was literally studying the stuff every day and listening to lectures on the subject. Nearly 20 years out of school, I have some more life experience but not very much more knowledge about world history than where I left off.
In fact, I think that "life experience" in some ways has made me very biased. Admittedly, I haven't seen anything good come out of the Islamic world in the past 20 years and as soon as I hear someone screaming jihad and beheading people, any historical sympathies go straight out the window.
I agree with you in this. When I was in university studying economics, I knew the ins and outs of academic finance and economics, and (gonna sound massively naive here) when I was engaged in discussions with senior people, I would back off if I sensed that they had not read all the literature, to save them face. Now what I do is very pertinent to the job at hand but I honestly think I've done a fair job in staying curious and hungry compared to many office workers who just don't read real books at all anymore.
About these students - idk. Tell me what you think about them. Because I think everyone just has a different perspective and no one is crazy/ stupid. I'm also very hesitant in drawing big conclusions like 'students are getting dumber now' because that's the classic 'This Time is Different' in investing
(I'll come back to your comment about logical fallacy in a moment. Basically I agree that it's a logical fallacy and you pointed that out for me, but I just feel that Ben's content is somewhat declining lately)
For these students knowledge generally isn't the issue. The issue is they have zero idea with how their knowledge interfaces with the real world.
Take Israel and Palestine, these students just parrot the stuff their professors have told them. They have the facts, but they don't understand anything about how the history presents itself in the modern world.
Ben Shapiro, famously good at winning debates against 18 year olds lol. What a smart lad.
I watched both debates. The students were debating with one hand and one leg tied behind them because their positions were utterly indefensible. The Islamic world, at any given time, is engaged in a half dozen conflicts with countless dead civilians. The only time these left-wing activists care about dead brown people is when it surrounds the Jews. Anti-Semitism is rampant in the Islamic world because the Qu'ran is extremely anti-Semitic. The idea that the Jews would set up shop in Palestine (the Jewish homeland but also one of the holiest places in Islam) is highly offensive to the Islamic world. So, the Muslims, for over a century, have pushed anti-Semitism (the "oppressor" 17 million Jews against the poor, put upon 2 billion peaceful Muslims) onto useful idiots in the West via the academic world. So you have this un-holy alliance between secular leftists and Islamic activists who spout provable lies about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The left-wing and Islamic activists came armed to the debates with provable lies and the faulty logic of a child, which Ben Shapiro was able to easily defeat. It wasn't a fair debate in that sense. You had a bunch of morons who had never had their worldview challenged in their entire lives--they thought they'd show up and dominate Shapiro; instead, they found out why it's important to have true academic freedom and diversity on campus. Academic freedom and diversity forces you to defend what you believe and to get better at it with each iteration. Their complete lack of preparation was easy prey for Shapiro.
You really hate Islam eh? You can’t admit the utter ruin American rains down on half the world regularly but single out the brown folks eh? Your racism is showing
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