High School Debate at 350 wpm - Wired
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN mostly cites it as an example of speed-talking debate, usually critically, in threads about the Gish gallop and debate culture.
What it is
A Wired short on competitive high school policy debate, where students speak at around 350 words per minute. It shows how a nerdy contest turned into a high-speed spectacle.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2017 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites bobbiechen · 2020-05 · on “Gish Gallop”
A particularly ridiculous version of this is "spreading" in debate, where you speak extremely fast so that your opponent has difficulty addressing all your points. Wired video with some interviews: [this video] And a transcribed video from a highly-prepped debate: [LINK]
Cites hairofadog · 2022-10 · on “Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister”
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: [LINK] 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": [this video]
Critical smacktoward · 2017-10 · on “The Corrosion of High School Debate”
Let's take race and gender off the table and consider this video instead: [this video] Here we see a bunch of (white, male) kids, all of whom are supposed to be experts in persuasive rhetoric, who have been trained to make arguments in a way that is utterly unpersuasive to anyone who has not spent years steeping in the world of academic debate. In fact, not only is it unpersuasive to the untrained ear, it is actively off-putting -- difficult and unpleasant to listen to. Their method demonstrates both of the troubling points that TFA calls out: 1) They have been taught to cram more arguments into a given amount of time than their opponents can, so they race through their arguments at 350 words per
Critical jdietrich · 2019-03 · on “Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks”
See also the Gish Gallop - a debating technique named after the creationist Duane Gish, which involves making as many specious arguments as quickly as possible. An unprepared opponent is likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of points they need to refute. [LINK] A variant of this technique is now standard in competitive debating, creating a truly absurd spectacle; most teams speak as quickly as humanly possible to fit the greatest number of arguments into a fixed time limit, creating a barely-intelligible blur of words. [this video] [LINK]
Critical a9h74j · 2020-11 · on “Microsoft patents tech to score meetings with body language, facial expressions”
"Policy"-style debate[1][2]. What happens when metrics must be gamed to win. State as many points as you can while gasping for breath. Coming to coworkers near you. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Critical shortrounddev2 · 2023-07 · on “How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate”
High school debate is not a good event for this kind of argumentation. It's a very technical event with stupid rules and ridiculous "speeches" which consiset of someone screaming facts at you at 300wpm in between gasps of air [this video]
Critical phoenixreader · 2023-07 · on “How critical theory is radicalizing high school debate”
fun fact: an average "policy debate" speaker speaks 350 words per minute and is completely unintelligible to an average person. They speak faster than auctioneers. A "policy debate" is not your average debate and is more like its own sport. The goal is to cram so many arguments into the limited time that your opponents cannot address them all. Watch these and you definitely cannot understand them: [this video] [LINK] Even the Onion could not have written a better skit.