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by lamontcg 1338 days ago
Here's the American Debate Association's 2019 High School Championships:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqjHz9laqgU&t=368s

And debate between the Harvard Democrats and Republicans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYLcpQQCjLE&t=1655s

I've never seen or heard of a debate like the one in Peter Schiff's youtube channel there, and it is pretty obviously being shared on social media for emotional effect.

1 comments

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: https://radiolab.org/episodes/debatable

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": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FPsEwWT6K0

Yeah so it was essentially satire.

You'd think that in a community of "hackers" that should value actual skepticism and subversion that people wouldn't fall so easily for obvious propaganda.

Defending their performance by arguing that it was rebellion or satire is pretty much admitting that the debate style (fast debating, AKA spreading [1]) is ridiculous and deserves rebellion or satire.

And if this was an intentionally extreme example meant to demonstrate problems with the format, then sharing it and citing it here seems entirely appropriate and even expected.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreading_(debate)

You know that wasn't why it was shared here, and it was deliberately edited to push people towards a completely different conclusion.