Something has gone wrong with how we disagree. Scroll through any comments section. Sit through any family dinner where politics arise. Watch any cable news "debate." What passes for argument today is often just parallel monologue—people talking past each other, scoring points for invisible audiences, changing no minds and learning nothing.
But here's the thing: it wasn't always like this. And it doesn't have to stay this way.
The Debate Guide exists because the ancient Greeks figured out something we've forgotten. They discovered that structured disagreement—debate with rules, with listening, with genuine attempts to understand opposing views—doesn't just resolve conflicts. It sharpens minds. It builds relationships. It gets closer to truth than any individual thinking alone ever could.
THE SUPERDEBATE MISSION
This guide is part of something larger: SuperDebate, the platform for adult debate clubs.
SuperDebate started from a simple observation: competitive debate transforms how people think, yet it virtually disappears after college. High school and university debate programs produce sharper thinkers, better listeners, and more persuasive communicators. Then graduates enter adult life and... nothing. No infrastructure. No community. No way to keep practicing the skills that served them so well.
Meanwhile, millions of adults crave intellectual engagement. Book clubs satisfy part of that need. So do podcasts and online forums. But nothing quite matches the intensity of a real debate—the adrenaline of thinking on your feet, the discipline of steelmanning opponents, the humility that comes from losing to a better argument.
The point of debate isn't to win. It's to get better at thinking. Winning is just how you keep score.SuperDebate founding principle
SuperDebate is building the infrastructure that adult debate never had. The platform connects organizers who want to start clubs, debaters looking for intellectual community, and judges who mentor the next generation of speakers. From local meetups in coffee shops to global championships, the goal is simple: make arguing fun again.
Not arguing in the toxic sense. Arguing in the ancient sense—the collaborative pursuit of truth through structured disagreement. The kind of arguing that makes you smarter even when you lose. Especially when you lose.
Three Pillars
Community building. Debate is a team sport disguised as an individual one. You need opponents who challenge you, judges who sharpen you, and fellow debaters who share the journey. SuperDebate connects these communities across cities and countries.
Education. Rhetoric and critical thinking aren't just for elite schools. Everyone can learn to argue better—to spot fallacies, construct cases, and engage with ideas they disagree with. The Debate Guide is the educational foundation of that mission.
Civic discourse. Democracies require citizens who can disagree productively. When we lose the ability to argue well, we lose the ability to govern ourselves. Every person who learns to steelman an opponent's position, to change their mind when evidence demands it, strengthens the fabric of public life.
WHY THIS GUIDE
The Debate Guide fills a gap that shouldn't exist. Walk into any bookstore and you'll find shelves of books on public speaking, presentation skills, and communication. But try to find a comprehensive, accessible guide to the art of argument—the kind the Greeks invented and the Romans perfected—and you'll come up short.
Academic rhetoric texts exist, dense with jargon and aimed at specialists. Competitive debate manuals exist, focused on tournament formats most adults will never use. Pop psychology books about "winning arguments" exist, often teaching manipulation rather than genuine persuasion.
What didn't exist was this: a guide that takes the twenty-five-hundred-year tradition of rhetoric seriously, translates it for modern readers, and makes it practical. A book that treats readers as intelligent adults capable of handling ancient Greek vocabulary alongside actionable techniques. A resource that serves both the curious reader and the practicing debater.
The art of persuasion through language. Not manipulation or trickery, but the disciplined observation of what makes communication effective—and ethical.
The Greeks didn't separate the study of argument from the study of ethics. They understood that how we argue reflects who we are. A person who relies on fallacies reveals a lazy mind. A person who attacks opponents rather than positions reveals weak character. A person who never changes their mind reveals a closed heart.
This guide carries that tradition forward. Yes, you'll learn techniques that work. But you'll also learn why those techniques matter—and when using them would make you smaller rather than larger.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Thomas Connor grew up on Chicago's South Side in a working-class family. Neither parent attended college. Opportunities seemed limited. But at fifteen, while captaining his high school football team and spending nights alone reading Nietzsche and Plato, a history teacher noticed something: Connor argued. A lot. She sent him to debate coach Scott Dodsworth, who saw potential in all that argumentative energy.
His first varsity debate tournament felt alien—competitors speaking at impossible speeds, deploying terminology he'd never heard, discussing ideas with a precision that seemed beyond reach. He placed third speaker in the novice division anyway. Something clicked.
For two years, Connor considered quitting before every tournament. The intellectual world of debate still felt foreign, a place where he didn't quite belong. The breakthrough came when he stopped trying to prove he was smart and started genuinely engaging with ideas. Senior year, he won the city-wide varsity championship. A full debate scholarship followed, then another championship in college.
Debate gave me confidence, analytical rigor, and empathy—particularly the hard kind, where you have to genuinely consider viewpoints you disagree with. I use those skills every single day.John Thomas Connor
After college, Connor built companies. He created a peer-to-peer marketplace with thousands of service providers. He consulted on product strategy for over thirty tech startups. He managed teams, designed growth strategies that increased revenue fifteenfold, and founded an NFT infrastructure company that raised over a million dollars and partnered with major blockchain platforms.
But throughout his career, he kept noticing the same problem: public discourse was collapsing. Social media optimized for engagement over understanding. The basic human skill of arguing well—really arguing, with evidence and empathy and willingness to change your mind—had been lost. Smart people he knew had nowhere to practice the skills that mattered most.
SuperDebate emerged from that observation. Connor set out to build what he calls "the first large-scale adult debate ecosystem since ancient times"—infrastructure for communities where rigorous intellectual exchange can flourish, where the best arguments win rather than the loudest voices.
The Debate Guide is the educational foundation of that project. Before building platforms and organizing championships, there needed to be a shared understanding of what good argument looks like. The Greeks spent centuries developing that understanding. This guide translates it for anyone willing to learn—not just academics or competitive debaters, but the kid reading philosophy alone at night, wondering if there's anyone out there who wants to think together.
There is. And now there's somewhere to go.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
The agora never really closed. It just moved.
Today's agora is a debate club meeting in a library basement. It's a Zoom call connecting speakers across continents. It's a dinner table where disagreement leads to understanding rather than silence. It's wherever people gather to test ideas against opposition, to change their minds when evidence demands it, and to pursue truth together rather than alone.
SuperDebate is building infrastructure for that agora. The Debate Guide is the training manual for citizens who want to participate.
Find a club near you, or start one. Work through the exercises in this guide. Practice arguing positions you disagree with. Get comfortable being wrong—it's how you get better at being right.
The conversation has been going for twenty-five hundred years. Your voice belongs in it.
The goal isn't to win arguments. It's to become the kind of person who argues well.