269K views · May 14, 2013 · 3:02 · 0 HN recommenders · 7 mentions · discussed 2017–2023
A Wired short on competitive high school policy debate, where students speak at around 350 words per minute. It shows how a nerdy contest turned into a high-speed spectacle.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN mostly cites it as an example of speed-talking debate, usually critically, in threads about the Gish gallop and debate culture.
“Wired video with some interviews”
Wired video with interviews on speed-talking debate.
A particularly ridiculous version of this is "spreading" in debate, where you speak extremely fast so that your opponent has difficulty addressing all your points. Wired video with some interviews: this video And a transcribed video from a highly-prepped debate: link
Example of the ridiculous style that prompted the rebellion.
I agree; the video in the comment above yours was edited specifically to focus hate on a couple of high school students. While I have to admit I'm not a fan of that debate style, if you want to know the context behind it, there's an episode of Radiolab on the topic: link The short version is that it seems to have been a response and rebellion to what was already an arguably ridiculous style of competitive "debating": this video
“difficult and unpleasant to listen to”
Let's take race and gender off the table and consider this video instead: this video Here we see a bunch of (white, male) kids, all of whom are supposed to be experts in persuasive rhetoric, who have been trained to make arguments in a way that is utterly unpersuasive to anyone who has not spent years steeping in the world of academic debate. In fact, not only is it unpersuasive to the untrained ear, it is actively off-putting -- difficult and unpleasant to listen to. Their method demonstrates both of the troubling points that TFA calls out: 1) They have been taught to cram more arguments into a given amount of time than their opponents can, so they race through their arguments at 350 words per minute like meth-fueled auctioneers; and 2) They have been taught to crowd out their opponents' time to make their own arguments by throwing out as many outrageous, nonsensical arguments as they can, since an argument their opponent does not refute will be scored by the judges as a point won regardless of its factual merit. These things are fine if you see debate as a sort of abstract exercise. But if the point of debate is to train young people how to argue persuasively in the real world, they are disastrous , because they do the opposite. The "overload your opponent with nonsensical arguments" part teaches them to be aggressively obtuse, and the "spit out the words as fast as you can" part teaches them to communicate in a way that no lay person can understand or appreciate. And taken to
“creating a truly absurd spectacle”
See also the Gish Gallop - a debating technique named after the creationist Duane Gish, which involves making as many specious arguments as quickly as possible. An unprepared opponent is likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of points they need to refute. link A variant of this technique is now standard in competitive debating, creating a truly absurd spectacle; most teams speak as quickly as humanly possible to fit the greatest number of arguments into a fixed time limit, creating a barely-intelligible blur of words. this video link
“State as many points as you can while gasping for breath.”
"Policy"-style debate[1][2]. What happens when metrics must be gamed to win. State as many points as you can while gasping for breath. Coming to coworkers near you. [1] this video [2] link
“someone screaming facts at you at 300wpm in between gasps of air”
High school debate is not a good event for this kind of argumentation. It's a very technical event with stupid rules and ridiculous "speeches" which consiset of someone screaming facts at you at 300wpm in between gasps of air this video
“Even the Onion could not have written a better skit.”
fun fact: an average "policy debate" speaker speaks 350 words per minute and is completely unintelligible to an average person. They speak faster than auctioneers. A "policy debate" is not your average debate and is more like its own sport. The goal is to cram so many arguments into the limited time that your opponents cannot address them all. Watch these and you definitely cannot understand them: this video link Even the Onion could not have written a better skit.
