Scott Alexander holds a yearly Adversarial collaboration contest. I think it is a brilliant idea, it encourages contestants to be openminded and to engage in a tolerant debate. Rather than:
“this is the hill I die on: fight me”.
I would love to give it a go: here are some potential topics I would like to ‘adversarially’ collaborate on (my position);
- Testing on Bonobos and Chimpanees is (currently) a necessary evil
- Prisons should only be for those who are a likely physical danger to society
- More QuALYs are taken (per year) by economic and digital warfare now, than actual warfare 50 years ago.
- Anyone (that doesnt have a mental handicapp) can learn calculus
- Most voters cannot list more than 3 of their parties’ policies (with non-trivial detail)