37 ms·

You not being good at arguing and lacking the skills to parse through lots of information and pick out the important bits does not make debate a gimmick.

• c_crank 3y ago
  Do you think the characters in the Socratic dialogues Plato writes about are terrible at arguing, because they speak in a normal cadence instead of scrambling through rhetoric as fast as possible?
  • 1000bestlives 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • c_crank 3y ago
      Perhaps adding a strict time limit to a debate is also a gimmick.
  • ang_cire 3y ago
    No, I think they weren't bound by a time limit in a competitive activity. If they had been, and not spread, I'd think they were terrible at debating, yes. Do you think competitive debate are unable to speak slowly when there's not a time limit?
    • c_crank 3y ago
      Unable? No. The format of competitive debates often lends itself to awarding 'points' based on the number of arguments that can be put out, rather than examining their validity. A time limit only makes that pressure worse. The Socratic dialogues are written like normal human conversations in an attempt to give the audience the ability to read and understand the ideas being spoken. That's why they are still studied, thousands of years later. The insane drivel-speak of competitive debates will be lucky to be remembered for any few years after the topics they regurgitate stop being relevant.
      • ang_cire 3y ago
        Just because you are incapable of understanding it doesn't make it drivel. The fact you are trying to discount high school debate on the basis of it not being the Socratic Dialogues (which, to be clear, nothing you have ever done or will do will stand up to those either), just shows you're not arguing in good faith.
        • c_crank 3y ago
          High school debate will not be on the same level as Plato, not unless they are miraculously talented high schoolers involved. The techniques that are taught in high school debate still make it far less resembling Plato's writings, or anything coherent. A high schooler taught to argue in a coherent way would produce something that is not drivel. The content of high school debates is drivel. It is a torrent of pre written, basic arguments designed to be quickly heard and given points by judges who already memorized all of those points. No one trying to persuade in the real world talks like a competitive high school debate. Not presidents, not angry college students, not smarmy news anchor talking heads. It's only worth is inside the academic setting where you win points for how many crappy arguments you can cram in a sentence. That's what makes it drivel.
          • ang_cire 3y ago
            You keep saying "points", but rounds are not decided based on points. Do you actually have any idea how competitive debate works? Spreading arguments doesn't help you if they're bad arguments. If you think that just laying out more (bad) arguments will win against an experienced team, you're either delusional, or you've never actually watched high-level policy debate.
            • c_crank 3y ago
              There are judges, and they incentive verbal diarrhea by making the winners the one who can produce the most 'correct' arguments in the least amount of time. This perverse incentive structure does not exist anywhere else except in competitive debate. >If you think that just laying out more (bad) arguments will win against an experienced team, you're either delusional, or you've never actually watched high-level policy debate. I think any argument that is spread is bad. Some are a worse kind of bad. But none are good.