Comment by pnmahoney | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pnmahoney | Hacker News Reader

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Submitting printed sheets of bullet-pointed arguments with footnoted references is almost exactly what college policy is right now. Except: it is the full text of the cited evidence, so as to prevent misrepresentation.

Why?

Because they already know how to be orators and can excel at that (I've seen both sides of this: there are pretty prominent examples of former debate champions now working in front-facing roles as PMs, VPs, etc in tech). Having mastered that, it's pretty unsatisfying to compete strictly at that level. Look no further than the intellectual depth of a debate with Tony Blair - an orator who can't follow his argument all the way down - for an example.

Here let me explain the logic of your criticism this way:

> These formatted baking pastry competitions because are useless! Really, who's to say whether any of these guys/gals knows how to poach an egg?

So... why mention that charisma and speaking ability sometimes decide the winner, if they're all so equally matched that I'm somehow egregiously wrong for thinking that it could possibly be a factor, let alone an important and intended one that's a significant part of the point of the thing?

Also: where did "strictly" enter in my post? You seem to rely largely on my post somehow excluding the importance of the actual arguments or any other elements of the competition, which it doesn't. I just thought it was odd you were so dismissive of the public speaking aspect of the competition, as if you'd written "it's strange, but sometimes pastry baking skill wins these pastry baking competitions, which isn't ideal but is kinda OK I guess."

Then I wrote "isn't that a large part of the whole point of it?" and you wrote "pft, they're so beyond baking the baking barely matters, n00b" and now I'm posting, "wait, what?"

[EDIT] Ah, just noticed you're not the poster to whom I originally responded. Maybe you missed some of the context of the first couple posts. That'd explain it.

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