After returning from  my visiting to Seaworld San Diego with my Humanities class, I as well as two other debate team members had to come up with six points to argue that it is ethical  to keep Cetaceans in captivity.

At first I believed that we were the losing side of this resolution, which just proved my lack of knowledge surrounding ethical debates.  I found out that the point of a proper debate isn’t really about seeing which side is right and which is wrong.  A debate is almost less about the topic than the argument itself.  I realized that even the team on the side that is widely seen as the obvious “bad” one usually has the same chance to win as the opponent.  Another way of looking at it is likes soccer match.  The majority of the crowd might really want one side to beat the other, but the final score is not affected by the will of the fans but by the performance of the teams.  Overall the judge in a debate is looking for a quality debate, and that’s why they have to have a neutral opinion at the beginning of the debate wether or not they know of the topic.

A strategy as used to succeed in the debate when I was on the side I don’t believe in, I pretended to have no knowledge of the topic before my research to try and see it from another perspective.

In the end I was happy with how my second debate ever went especially looking back at how bad my vegetarian debate (my first debate) went.  However I feel like I have enough to improve on to be much better next time.