I’d like to debate anyone who would have a long and organized enough debate that it’s suitable to make trees and videos. Or if they have a large audience that’s fine too. There has to be some sort of value for me, like serious engagement or publicity. Someone with no fans who quits without explanation after 1-3 messages is easily available in Reddit comment sections but generally doesn’t offer value to me.
Preferred topics include decisive vs. indecisive arguments, Popper, Goldratt, debate methodology and Paths Forward, but a ton of topics are fine (not MAGA, but underlying issues like political philosophy, economics or feminism are fine).
I also feel like maybe Paths Forward could gain traction if it got some publicity but I’m not sure. In my experience, intellectuals with fans don’t want it, e.g. David Deutsch, Robin Hanson, Aubrey de Gray, Alex Epstein.
People without fans sometimes like it because it sounds rational or because they imagine it being used on their enemies, or they imagine using it to get debates they want. But if I then try to use it on them, I’ve found they don’t want to do it.
People without fans also commonly object saying it’d take too long. They often don’t seem to understand it in detail and it’s hard to get enough attention to address their concerns. I think a common cause of this is they are imagining it being used against someone they are a fan of.
My latest approach to talking about this is saying that public intellectuals should have written debate policies. It’s harder to object to this on the basis that it’d take too long because they can put whatever they want in the debate policy and limit how long it takes to follow. Plus their debate policy itself doesn’t need to be original – if a million people had debate policies, over 90% of them would just endorse a generic pre-written policy or combine generic pre-written passages together to make their own semi-customized policy. They wouldn’t even have to write a whole debate policy themselves. But even writing your own policy from scratch is just one essay – a low burden.