Andrzej Smyk told us that we could
choose the topic for the debates by ourselves. The group voted and chose
"People's life in the future". We decide to have a thesis "In the
future robots will have the same rights as humans".
Before these debates the proposition and the opposition teams were
given a short training including the test thesis which was a bit similar
to our main one (and very different at the same time): "Every
politician in Europe is a robot". The audience prepared controversial
arguments and tricky questions for the speakers.
The debates went quite well and the proposition team won. Both
proposition and opposition teams gave persuasive arguments which might
have changed the opinions of even those who could oppose an idea of
robots having human rights before. The theme was very vast but during
the Oxford debates your own opinion can't influence your speech, as you
don't even choose your team and your role. Thus it's quite a challenge
when you can't speak from your heart.