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High School Debate at 350 wpm - Wired

WIRED · 269K views · 2013-05-14 · 3:02

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN mostly cites it as an example of speed-talking debate, usually critically, in threads about the Gish gallop and debate culture.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2017–2023

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What people said

shortrounddev2 · 2023-07 · Criticism

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 [VIDEO]

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phoenixreader · 2023-07 · Criticism

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: [VIDEO] [LINK] Even the Onion could not have written a better skit.

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hairofadog · 2022-10 · Reference

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": [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by WIRED, played through YouTube.

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