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Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

... wait what?

Debating is not on the usual school curriculum in many (most?) countries. You'll usually find private debating clubs, but they're also often not a big or even usual thing. Hence often not even known about.

I understand not having a debate program at your school before a university level.

What I do not understand is how you could be completely ignorant of the idea of "debates". There are thousands of videos on YouTube of debates. How can you understand the definition of the word debate and not realize that people have debates?

To me, that's like saying "I didn't know science fairs were a thing". Sure, I can understand how many (most?) people have probably not participated in a science fair themselves, although I made my initial comment aware that this is Hacker News and it's a slightly different group of people than the population at large. I do not understand the level of myopia that would be required to not even realize they exist.

There's often not even at a university level. There are millions of videos on YouTube, easy to miss a few thousand, especially if it's not something you ever actively looked for to trigger YouTube's you-might-also-like algos. Also debating where a debate is necessary or natural is not the same as making a sport out of it!

All it takes is a non-american (non-western?) society. As a South African we don't have science fairs - at least not in the same way that I understand America does them. In school there are no science "competitions", and the closest that we ever got was doing an experiment as a class. The only reason I'm familiar with them is through American media, and to be honest they're still a bit of a weird concept that I'm not sure I fully understand.

As to debates, I've come across several debating clubs and public speaking clubs, however when I think of "debate" I think of American elections with politicians on a stage with podiums - we don't really have that here, especially between parties.

Your level of exposure to science fairs and debates sounds about the same as mine (an American). Yet we still know what they are from media portrayals, etc. I think that was fastball's point.

I don't think I've ever personally seen a science fair in real life, and I doubt any of my friends have, so it's at least a thing that's two degrees removed from my personal experience. I could easily see, once its thats far removed, thinking that even though I know what the word means, that it's not actually something that you'd encounter in real life -- that like e.g. bullies in school on TV, it's just something that is made up for story telling purposes in fiction.

The myopia is assuming that every Hacker News reader is American. Many are not, and only a few countries organize debates or science fairs.

I should hope anyone reading hacker news has been exposed to a democratic form of government, and anyone familiar with democracy should be familiar with debating.

Also, I'm not American.

I agree that in this day and age it’s unusual to be ignorant of such a prevalent concept.

I know what penguins, stoning, and The Great Wall are, even though I live in the US and those things aren’t common here.

I'd assume they mean the academic formalised competitive kind of debates, not debates in general.

I wasn't really aware of then until I went to university.

Same. It seems to be a US thing. Coming from eastern Europe, I saw the school debate idea a few years ago in some movie and learned it's a serious sport thing only a month ago or so. (Where I also learned the competition level is pretty twisted / often relying on min/maxing rules)

It's definitely not a common concept. I've heard of chess boxing before this.

I replied to "I didn't know debates were a thing", not "I didn't realize universities had debate teams and that it was a competitive activity".

All I was looking for was a clarification from the person who made the very general statement. All I got was a lot of people putting words in someone else's mouth.

Well, to be fair, to "be a thing" is not equivalent to "exist".

In this context, I guess that "be a thing" means, "be something people do in their spare time, even when not strictly required to because its forced upon them in their role as politician/whatever."

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