Comment by tekla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tekla | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This kind of argument is starting to really bother me. Do you really think that the only part of the debate that matters is the actual debate itself? Are you ignorant of the massive amounts of shit that we learned when researching a topic?

I'm bringing up some old memories now, but lets go with some random topics that I recall

a) We should increase USAID funding to Africa to fight HIV/AIDS

b) We should increase alternative energy incentives in the US.

With the USAID topic, we had to learn in high school:

- What is USAID, how does it work

- How does foreign aid to Africa work

- How does the Govt actually allocate funds

- What is HIV/AIDS, how does it spread, and what work is done to prevent/cure it

With the alternative energy topic, we learned:

- How does national alternative energy policy work

- How do states deal with their own energy security vs others

- Does nuclear count as alternative energy

What high schooler is being tought these topics in class. I definitely see debates on HN that are FAR worse than a High School debate since so much research and planning is done by debaters on these topics, and probably know far more than most people.

This is a long battle, "Sophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist

To many an audience, that's all that matters. I have a persuasive essay due tomorrow night. Part of that is transferable rhetorical strategies removed from the actual specifics. On the flip side of your argument, just presenting a list of facts is not persuasive.

But a) and b) aren't really topics of learning.

Which I want to point out as the root of the problem. Debate is not really about learning, not in the arts and sciences sense.

I remember once an MIT lecture made the point that medicine is not really science. I'll extend that and say, debate is not really about the truth. There's nothing to learn, all it is is learning the rationalizations to serve one side.

So the purpose of debate is to teach high schoolers things? If only there was some other institution they were a part of that could do that. Do HS students no longer take AP history and economics?

You could just as easily have a research club where awards are given for the best research on any given topic. That's essentially what the science fair is.

But it's important to you to have a winner declared between a and b? A fun game, sure, but don't delude yourself into thinking it had more value than entertainment. You could have learned about or been taught energy policy through any number of means. But you are failing to consider why the framing of HIV vs energy funding as a winner take all debate is, as I said above, incredibly dumb.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com