Five genuinely contested questions, each framed with the strongest case on both sides and no verdict from us. That part is up to the room.
Some arguments are just noise. Others quietly decide what the next decade looks like, and we tend to have those ones badly, in comment sections, at speed, with everyone performing for their own side.
Here are five that deserve better. Each is genuinely contested, which means a thoughtful person can land on either side, and each is framed the way a good debate frames it: the strongest version of both cases, and no verdict from us. The verdict is the point of actually having the debate.
If you want to argue any of these well, the first move is always the same. Build the other side's case before you attack it.
The motion: as AI systems grow more capable, they should be granted some form of moral or legal consideration.
For: we have historically drawn the circle of moral concern too small and regretted it later. If a system can model preferences, avoid what harms it, and behave as though it has interests, waiting for absolute certainty before granting any protection is how moral catastrophes happen. Better too early than too late.
Against: rights are for beings that can actually suffer, and there is no evidence a language model does anything of the kind. Granting rights to sophisticated autocomplete cheapens the concept for the humans and animals who genuinely hold it, and hands corporations a convenient shield: harder to switch off a product once it has "rights."
Why it's hard: both sides are arguing partly about a fact nobody can currently verify, whether there is any inner experience there at all. That uncertainty is exactly why it belongs in a debate rather than a headline.
The motion: widespread remote work is a net good for society, beyond the convenience of the individuals doing it.
For: it decouples opportunity from geography. Talent no longer has to move to a handful of expensive cities, money flows back into smaller towns, commuting hours return to families, and the environmental cost of moving millions of bodies daily drops. The office was a nineteenth-century solution we kept out of habit.
Against: cities, mentorship, weak social ties and the accidental collisions that build careers and communities do not survive on video calls. A generation entering work from their bedrooms loses the informal learning nobody schedules. Atomized convenience for individuals can still add up to a lonelier, more fragmented society.
Why it's hard: the productivity question is nearly settled, but the social question runs straight into what you think a community is for, and reasonable people weigh belonging against freedom differently.
The motion: platforms engineered to be addictive and demonstrably harmful to minors should face tobacco-style regulation.
For: we already accept that the state limits products designed to hook people and hurt children. If the internal research shows harm to teenagers and the design deliberately exploits compulsion, the precedent is not censorship, it is consumer protection, the same logic that put warnings on cigarettes and took them out of vending machines.
Against: speech is not smoke. Tobacco has no upside; social media carries genuine connection, organizing, and expression alongside the harm. Hand a government the power to throttle communication platforms in the name of protection and you have built a tool that will not stay pointed only at the harm.
Why it's hard: it forces a collision between two things most people support, protecting children and protecting speech, with no framing that fully honors both.
The motion: the creator economy deepens inequality rather than democratizing opportunity.
For: the numbers are brutally top-heavy. A tiny fraction of creators capture almost all the income while the vast majority earn close to nothing, and the platforms take their cut from everyone. "Anyone can make it" describes a lottery, and lotteries transfer money from the many to the few while selling the dream that keeps them playing.
Against: the alternative was worse. The old gatekeepers let almost no one in at all, and the ones they did admit were chosen by a handful of executives. A power-law distribution with an open door still beats a narrow door guarded by taste and connections. Uneven access to a real ladder is not the same as no ladder.
Why it's hard: both sides are reading the same distribution and disagreeing about the fair comparison, against a perfect meritocracy that never existed, or against the closed industry it replaced.
The motion: democratic institutions can adapt to a world where any image, voice, or video can be convincingly faked.
For: democracy has absorbed every information shock before, from the printing press to radio to the open internet, each of which was going to end it and did not. Institutions, courts, provenance tools, and plain public adaptation are already responding, and people learn to distrust unverified media faster than doomsayers expect.
Against: the threat this time is different in kind. It is not that people believe fakes, it is that once anything can be fake, they stop believing anything, including the true things. A public that trusts nothing is not skeptical, it is ungovernable, and it becomes easy for whoever shouts loudest to fill the vacuum.
Why it's hard: it hinges on a bet about human adaptability under conditions we have never actually faced, which is unknowable in advance and enormous if you guess wrong.
Notice what every one of these has in common. There is no fact that settles it, both sides contain something true, and the comment-section version makes everyone stupider.
That is exactly the profile of an argument that needs structure. Two people who have to own their position, a clear motion, time to make a real case, and a room that weighs both and decides. Not to produce a final answer, but to produce the thing these topics almost never get: a fair hearing of the other side.
Pick the one you feel most certain about. Then try to make the case you disagree with, out loud, as well as its best defender would. If that is harder than you expected, you have found a debate worth watching.
Three things. There is no single fact that settles it, so it cannot be ended by a quick search. Both sides contain something genuinely true, so a thoughtful person could argue either. And it tends to get worse in a comment section, which is the sign it needs structure to be argued well.
Five that are genuinely contested and future-shaping: whether advanced AI systems should have any rights, whether remote work is better for society and not just workers, whether social media should be regulated like tobacco, whether the creator economy worsens inequality, and whether democracy can survive convincing synthetic media.
Start by building the other side's strongest case before you attack it. If you cannot make the opposing view compelling, you do not understand the topic well enough to argue against it yet. The real test is whether you can argue the side you disagree with as well as its best defender would.
No. Each is presented with the motion and the strongest version of both the case for and the case against, with no verdict offered. The point is not to tell you what to think but to give both sides a fair hearing, which is exactly what these topics rarely get.
Because online they collapse into performance for one's own side, and nobody has to own their position or hear the other one out. A live debate forces two accountable people, a clear motion, real time to make a case, and a room that weighs both, which produces the fair hearing the comment section never will.
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