zlacker

>>hn_thr+(OP)
Sounds like you basically want political debate, but only among smart and/or well educated people?

It's an interesting idea for sure, but I'm not sure how or if such a thing can exist. Moderation becomes a headache, and well, a lot of truly brilliant people I've met in life have zero interest in debating it. How do you keep out the YT commenters, Fox News or r/politics commenters, etc?

It would be interesting if HN had some bucket like /offtopic, for things that are flamebaity and removed from the main view, but I fear it would attract the aforementioned people who only ever troll there, and dang probably having zero interest in mod'ing it.

>>silisi+F4
> Sounds like you basically want political debate, but only among smart and/or well educated people?

formalized highschool and college debate is pretty much this

>>whimsi+y7
That is sort of the opposite of what I've been told about high school and college formal debate, from people here who did it --- i.e., that there's little actual discussion involved. I'm trying to track down something Patrick McKenzie wrote about it; it made me stop regretting missing out on debate (one of only a few aspects of school I used to think I would have enjoyed).

>>tptace+lR
I've written a lot about debate over the years, but the one you're most likely referring to is (copied from a Reddit comment):

---

The jargon in the community for speaking really fast to win] is “spreading” and it was a dominant strategy by the late 1990s. Serious debaters expect to learn to read, listen, and talk that fast. There is widespread acknowledgement that it is tactical, and many sniff “against the purpose of debate” (while speaking at 200+ words per minute), but debate is a sport like football is a sport and if you want to play football without running or losing to people better at running than you, you may be selecting for a high friction lifestyle.

(There are several debate communities with some overlap, given that there are several styles of debate with different rulesets, organizations, and microcultures about performance. At least when I was doing it in 2000-2004, spreading was hegemonic in Policy debate and less effective (and beatable) in Parliamentary debate.)

>>patio1+gw4
This is absolutely true and it is prevalent in the two forms of debate I participated in (lincoln-douglas and policy). But I think it is disingenuous to say that there is "little actual discussion involved."

Spreading is not intelligible to the layperson, and to the extent to which debate is about presenting ideas in a way that convinces a layperson, it is a failure. But there really is only so much that one can say in short 6 minute speech times. Talking faster, provided people can follow what is happening/read quickly, allows oftentimes for a more in-depth discussion than what was previously possible.