- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.ml
- memes@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.ml
- memes@lemmy.ml
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Is this about political campaign debates or like high school debate club competitions?
Yes
Isn’t it just a competition to see who can talk the fastest? I watched a video of it once and it seemed so dumb. It’s like the entire thing is just finding loopholes
Pretty much.
What I find most problematic is that this culture teaches younglings that there’s no such thing as truth. It’s just rhetorical trickery and gotchas.
That’s because that’s how politics works. If you can get enough people to believe that what you say is true and act on that belief, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s actually true or not.
And that’s at least in part true, because people are taught that there’s nothing true, ever.
The media also react on that. All those “debates” between candidates for example. Most politicians would have to be interrupted every five seconds, because they tell obvious lies. Instead all the commentary focuses on debate style, which is utterly useless as a metric.
Of course it does. The problem with truth is - it’s often nuanced, complex and difficult so knowing how to communicate is important
That’s not the WHY. Debate isn’t trying to be like politics, but having formalized competitive rules for arguing is pretty difficult so there are a lot of ways to game the system. It’s not trying to model a broken world.
Is it not? I was under the belief that official political debates have a large influence on the format and rules of these debate clubs.
If not, it shouldn’t be that difficult to verify whether competitor’s statements are backed by evidence, or if they’re made up, or if they’re really opinions disguised as facts.
What’s an “official” political debate? The government runs no such thing.
Also in general, many debates on TV are jest talking, no winner is declared. It’s the opposite of a competitive format.
Yes, fair correction. Perhaps that is a point itself, the way debates between political opponents are presented as formal and official when in fact they are entirely at the whim of the broadcaster and the politicians involved.
Rhetorical tricks and gotchas aren’t necessarily in opposition to the truth. You have to be able to communicate effectively to get the truth across, so knowledge of rhetoric is important for countering compelling bullshit.
There was actually a college debate team who argued about this. There was essentially no rules saying you had to follow the stated topic so they argued about racial prejudices in debate clubs and how it’s really a competition to see who talks the fastest. They ended up winning nationals if I recall correctly
I did debate club in highschool and early college, but it was parliamentary style debate. I didn’t observe that much bullshit, so I’m guessing the US debate style is different
Nah that’s how debate club is everywhere. Middle, high school, and college.
The debates you see on TV are designed for whatever channel it’s on though.
Local councils are basically what you see on Parks and Rec. It’s where the OG crazies shine since they’ve mostly been banned from the internet lol.
What I meant was that during my debating years here in Canada, I didn’t see that much “stage performances” or “rhetorical tricks.”
I did 4 years of Canadian National Debate Format and 3 years of British Parliamentary debate, and is was overall a very pleasant experience.
