Reminds me of the horrific state of student debate competitions today where the winning strategy is to incomprehensibly rattle off as many arguments as quickly as possible with strange breathy sounds in between
This is a consequence of the fact that any argument not responded to "flows across" the score sheet and is automatically a win for the team making the argument, no matter how silly. So a "natural" tendency would be to ignore ridiculous arguments like "not paying for school lunches will cause children to hyperventilate, and by the butterfly effect will lead to infinite hurricanes in developing nations causing a collapse of the global economy and intergalatic war and genocide". But if the opposite team fails to acknowledge the argument then that is the same as conceding it will happen.
Which is pretty ridiculous. The purpose of a debate should be to change/consolidate the hearts and minds of the audience to your side. To this end, it's usually sufficient to pick apart a few of the key points of your opponent's argument. Nitpicking every aspect of your opponent usually comes off as uncharismatic.
Brevity is really important in a debate. Especially in the modern day where someone might turn you into a chad vs soyjack meme.
And if anything, what happens before the debate is more important than what happens during it. Our dear president showed us you can become the leader of the free world using playground insults and ad-libbed speeches if you choose the right demographics and look good in a suit.
I guess winning like this cheapens the victory. Then again, this strategy continues to be used at all levels of disputes and politics. I wish there was a way to stop that, not just in student debates.
I'm accustomed to listening to regular speech at 2-3x speed, but apparently that's entirely different than listening to a human try to speak 2-3x faster than normal, because I could barely pick intelligible syllables out of that mess.
This is such an example of getting what you incentivize, not what matters.
"Because we raise the trigger and only two carrying noodles, and only two can announce in this network but their excess cites their examine this places where the apparatus of military power torches the ground"
Hamdiddle-eedah-hamdiddle-ah (do do do do dodododo expi-ali-do-cious)
What is the point of that? They're incomprehensible. (For those who haven't watched it: the video just shows people talking very fast, it doesn't explain why, kind of implies it's somehow good or impressive.)
The point is to win debate tournaments. In particular, it is (or at least was, when I competed in policy debate in high school and college in the 00s) strategically advantageous to maximize the number of distinct arguments, each with their own set of supporting evidence (usually read verbatim from a prepared excerpt of a news article or authoritative reference or whatever), you make within the allocated time. This incentivizes talking extremely quickly, which requires a fair bit of practice to become proficient at (and to understand).
And the judges of these tournaments not only understand it too (I can understand an opponent understanding if they've practiced the same thing) but seriously value it in scoring?
Again/stepping back: what is the point of winning a debate tournament like this, or that values this 'debate'?
> And the judges of these tournaments not only understand it too (I can understand an opponent understanding if they've practiced the same thing)
Generally yes, although a good team will slow down and speak more or less like normal people if they have a so-called "lay judge" who wouldn't be able to understand them going at full speed.
> but seriously value it in scoring?
You don't really get "scored" on how fast you speak (there's no points system), but, as I mentioned, there are strategic reasons to speak quickly.
For instance, a time-honored strategy is to spew out a huge number of roughly-orthogonal arguments (e.g. "my opponent's policy failed to support the resolution we are debating this tournament, and thus shouldn't win for procedural reasons." "my opponent's policy would destabilize the Kashmir conflict and thus lead to global thermonuclear war." "my opponent's policy would preclude this alternative policy I am now presenting, and my policy is better, ergo my opponent's policy is bad in terms of opportunity cost." and so on), and then circle back later in the debate and further develop any arguments your opponent failed to adequately address (perhaps because they can't speak as fast as you).
An interesting counter-example from when I was actively debating is that at least one team on the national circuit was arguing (somewhat successfully, if I remember right) that speaking fast was a reason to actively vote against a team. The rough gist of the argument was something along the lines that being trained to speak quickly (and have the huge amount of prep-work required to really get value out of the skill) was something really only accessible to affluent/"privileged" kids (although that latter term was a couple years away from entering the common lexicon, I think), and then connecting it back to the central topic of that debate season so as to undermine whatever position the other team had originally presented (but, of course, pointing out that the impact of their argument was occurring in the real world, right now, contra the assumed fiction of their opponent's policy proposal or whatever, and thus a more urgent reason to vote for them).
> what is the point of winning a debate tournament like this, or that values this 'debate'?
For the most part, it's a fun and challenging game for the people involved, the same reason people play chess or go bowling. There's a lot of work and creativity that goes into preparing for a tournament, and the debate rounds themselves reward being able to think quickly on your feet and work well with your debate partner. You get a lot of practice at speaking in public, to a hostile audience no less, which is imo an incredibly valuable life skill (and can be very exciting).
Seems like a competition that started reasonably and mutated into nonsense over time as the rules were exploited (and never modified, I guess). If it's an established debate style and offered to kids as legitimate you can't blame them. Kids do what is available to them.
It is quite strange. One would think a judge would easily throw this out.
I mean there is probably not a specific rule I could point to that a high school athlete couldn't ride a bike or a motorcycle in a 400m track run either.
There is probably not a specific rule that you can't shoot the shot put out of a canon either.
I would just assume the judges have the slightest bit of common sense.
> I mean there is probably not a specific rule I could point to that a high school athlete couldn't ride a bike or a motorcycle in a 400m track run either.
There most definitely is such a rule, and there most definitely are people who have tried to do that - and been the cause of the original rule wording ; and others who still have tried to do so by "creatively interpreting" said rule.
That’s just like the larger discourse. The Gish gallop is standard practice.
Are there no rules in debates? There should be. You’re not allowed to punch someone in basketball so why should you be allowed to DOS people with bullshit in a debate?
Btw - my first author NeurIPS dataset and benchmarks paper is taking basically all the evidence that such debate community (American hs and college level policy and LD debate) produced over its recent history and making it easy for LLMs and people to consume it.
They’ve been quietly open sourcing all of their arguments for like 20+ years.
This dataset is so large and good entirely because of speed reading and the current state of debate tournament competitive dynamics. Spreading might be objectively absurd to listeners but the effects of it are literally good for society.