And these are just very, very hard debates to settle, because they depend on qualitative assessments (whose conspiracy theory is more round-the-bend and noxious? whose rhetoric tiptoes closest to demagoguery?) that are influenced, overly and covertly, by one's own ideological biases.
The debate tends to settle on one question: how many people must be offended by a team's name for a change to be warranted?
Last night's debate did little to settle the argument, but a packed house of academics, physics geeks, and just-curious laypeople seemed to enjoy themselves nonetheless.
Homeowners are not waiting for the debate to be settled because they have more pressing concerns, like keeping their families warm (or cool) and healthy during emergencies, no matter how frequently they occur.
That's a debate to be settled over the next few years, though, and I'm glad Ebert is not simply neophobic, however his recent writings have suggested that.
Lucas reluctantly agreed to the proposal, and began to disband his militia, believing the debate to be settled.
Sunstein has argued that judges (as well as government regulators) should "prefer nudges over earthquakes," gently influencing political debates without trying to settle them.
In response to Humphrey's calls for a face to face debate, Nixon remarked: "Before we can have a debate between Nixon and Humphrey, Humphrey's got to settle his debate with himself".
Producing the "trump card" of science to settle debate is not healthy for a democracy.
More recently this debate has cooled, appearing to settle in the same way that language conflicts are generally settled in the United States: by improvisation.
