IQ2US (Intelligence Squared)

In a time when we're seeing remarkably less open debate on issues of importance, I'm heartened to see an initiative like IQ2US.  Founded by a private citizen with a passion for public policy, IQ2US organizes debates on important and contentious issues that do not always get level-handed consideration in existing forums. Their goal is .....

"To raise the level of public discourse on our most challenging issues. To provide a new forum for intelligent discussion, grounded in facts and informed by reasoned analysis. To transcend the toxically emotional and the reflexively ideological. To encourage recognition that the opposing side has intellectually respectable views."

Here is a sampling of topics they'll be debating to sold out crowds. There isn't one I wouldn't attend if they had them in here in the Bay Area.

• It's time to end affirmative action
• Aid to Africa is doing more harm than good
• America should be the world's policeman
• We should legalize the market for human organs
• America's newspapers are yesterday's news

Comments

[Fantasy Writer Guy]

It's nice to see such a noble and laudable goal.

Unfortunately, to succeed fully and legitimately is, to my understanding, almost beyond human capacity in this age.

The utterly massive web of established causes and effects in this tremendous society, even just those directly or indirectly relevent to the kind of issues mentioned here, has never, in any debate that I've witnessed, been examined to a degree remotely sufficient to enable any bearing on the direction of truth or a legitimately useful resolution.

In the absence of properly verified and universally recognized dogma, a debate such as these, approached with the purest dedication to the above goal could go on for hundreds or thousands of hours, I suspect, before processing a significant enough pool of intelligence and analysis.

Even more crippling then toxic emotion or reflexive ideology is our almost total alienation to real truth, and the thorougly flawed and arbitrary subscriptions that we label 'truth' in substitution.

The only facts truly grounded are those observed with our own five senses. And yet no one behaves in accordance with this reality.

I suggest that as a goal this is utopia. But as an aim - as a direction - I applaud it. The first trick, I suppose, will be finding participants bearing little enough corruption that the task isn't immediately hopeless.

Sorry for the soap box lecture but this is a subject that deeply compels me!

[Heida]

Hi FWG,

Thanks so much for your comment and I understand the points entirely.

I'd have to agree that any debate lives in a world of imperfections and biases and that influencing any notable mass of people is likely to be challenging.

Apathy is, to me, probably the largest barrier to success.

That being said, I crave any forum that can provide more considered thought than what we're seeing in today's news, even if just for personal interest and decision making. I understand IQ2 will be broadcast and am looking forward to seeing how well they do!

Best,

Heida