So called competitive debate is really just a joke about who talk faster. There is no positive feedback loops where either side should take a moment to think and gives feedback. Sometimes agree to disagree is the best option. You learn nothing from the competitive debate.
It's basically twitter debate before twitter exists where ppl talking over each other
Regarding the fast talkimg - as I understand it, points are deducted heavily if you fail to address the entirety of the oppositions position, so it often devolves into verbal diarrhea where one position will attempt to overwhelm the other with sheer volume.
Yes, you are misinformed. That kind of shit works with entry level debate since
a) The debtors tend to suck since they are new.
b) The judges tend to just be randoms or not high quality (ie some are just random parents who volunteer who may not have actually debated) so they don't have the ability to parse through what actually happened during the debate properly.
When you get better, you have to learn what arguments matter and don't matter. The skill part of debate is knowing how to throw away as much useless arguments as possible and argume defensively and offensively against the parts that do matter.
You do not have to bother with any of the opposing sides arguments if you have concluded they are pieces of trash. I myself have won debates just by proving in 10 seconds that 4 minutes of the opposing teams arguments was irrelevant and just moved on.
Sheer volume is a valid tactic, since the opposing team COULD drop important arguments that actually matter, so that's part of the skill. I've watched plenty of top level debates where people talk both fast and slow.
As much as I instinctively feel a pretty strong sense of approval about the structure of high level competitive debate, I wonder if it's bordering on a certain niche admiration for form which doesn't prepare one for what I assume debate is supposed to prepare one for, engaging with the whole spectrum of the public on issues of importance to both them and yourself.
It reminds me of what happened to the cloistered world of esteemed traditional martial arts masters when MMA came along.
This is part of the reason why Twitter ended up controlling so much of the world's publc discourse.
Yes, but you still have to point out that the opposing teams arguments are irrelevant. If you just drop the argument, you will lose points.
(Caveat: I'm speaking as a parliamentary debater, I have extremely limited experience with policy debate. In policy, can you just drop an argument without responding to it at all?)
So in policy there aren't 'points', it's just a ballot decision, and I haven't seen speaker points deducted for dropping arguments that didn't factor into the ballot.
The danger in dropping an argument is that dropped arguments are supposed to be accepted as true, since they were unchallenged. So it's essentially conceding that particular argument, which unless it's really dumb and tactically useless, can be pretty dangerous of it's a potential "voter" (which not all arguments are). But there's no need to spend a bunch of time on each one.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> and they incentive verbal diarrhea by making the winners the one who can produce the most 'correct' arguments in the least amount of time
No, this may happen at low-level tournaments which still have lay/'mommy' judges, but no actual high-preff'd tournament judges are giving out ballots based on the number of arguments run.
Policy is a back-and-forth activity, and whatever arguments are made in the constructives have to actually hold up to the responses to them. If a team is running 9 T arguments, and the Aff team doesn't address their shitty "'The' means a specific singular entity, so using only one part of the USFG is a violation' T argument but covers 3 of the actual strong ones and runs a T-abuse argument as well, no judge is handing Neg the ballot for that.
And none of that is even beginning to touch on Condo (conditionality), which is a whole area of theory arguments specifically addressing Neg running arguments that they don't extend (and why they shouldn't be allowed to). That's especially effective when they're doing some kind off-case abuse like T or competing CPs.
Also, what do you mean "argument that is spread"? You either spread your speech or you don't. No one spreads arguments individually.
> As it turns out the best debaters can talk fast AND make good arguments simultaneously.
Ideally yes, that's what's its SUPPOSED to be like. But I have seldom or never seen it in practice.
It's on the system and judge to stop the students from talking over each other. I don't blame the students. They are just playing the game. If they get rewarded by short-cutting the debate, why not?
Talking over each other? What form of debate did you do? In policy there only one speaker at a time, and no one interrupts the other team's time to try to talk over them. That would be a sure loss, assuming the judge didn't straight end the round immediately.
It’s somewhat beneficial to lawyers etc simply because it exposes people to a different way of thinking. It’s roughly equivalent to science fairs, popsicle bridges, or math competitions for STEM students.
It's basically twitter debate before twitter exists where ppl talking over each other