Thanks for writing this post! I've met so many people who entered the HS debate -> AI safety pipeline and it's always neat to meet someone else who was involved in the activity.
That said, I think this is an overly rosy view of the activity at present. Debate (especially debate on the national circuit in the United States) has Goodharted pretty hard on some specific technical properties of the activity (i.e, dropped arguments being true, judges being very left-leaning in political ideology, and extinction and S-risks being most relevant under a utilitarian framing). These and some other factors have culminated in the production of some pretty pedagogically unvaluable argumentation.
Thanks for the thoughtful response - yeah I think the prevalence of K debate is a lot higher than when I was competing, though the other aspects don't feel quite as new? Totally possible that I'm romanticizing the activity though; it's been a while since I was at a tournament!
Sidenote, there's a funny thing about 'dropped arguments = true', where somehow I feel like it was one of the most helpful things I ever learned for weighing arguments against each other. That is, I started to understand 'Both sides are naturally going to drop some argument, and so how does the judge resolve from there? I guess they'll need to consider which is the more important drop, which means I should make arguments directly about that'
Very interesting about the blandness it’s pushing students toward. In my days, certainly there were some “stock” positions that recurred, often with the same substantiating evidence. But not because AI was suggesting them, obviously; other vectors like research briefs, copying successful debaters, example positions from debate camp, etc. Thanks for sharing that!
Having been a master debater in high school decades ago, I found that convincing the judges had little to do with it. What was important was putting on a show. Make the judges feel like you were convincing even if you weren't. In other words, you had to fake sincerity.
Some stories that illustrate:
David Ogilvy used to talk about two Greek orators. After one spoke, the people would say, how well he spoke. After the other spoke, the people said, let us march against Philip.
Coco Chanel used to say that if she made a dress for a woman and people who saw her wear it said, what a lovely dress, she had failed. She had succeeded if they said, you look beautiful!
A British entrepreneur told a story about hearing Neil Kinnock speak at Oxford. Afterward he was telling a friend how well Neil Kinnock spoke, holding everyone spellbound. Oh really, said the friend. What did he say? That stumped him. He hadn't a clue.
Appreciate hearing about your experience - that’s pretty different from mine in debate though, where there were strong expectations of judges explaining exactly why they voted for someone. Maybe different regions/events!
My point must not have been clear. What I am saying is that in debate competitions the judges vote on how convincing you sound, not on how convincing your arguments are. They realize you could just as easily be arguing the other side of the issue, affirmative rather than negative.
Debate teaches you to compete not to convince others of what you believe, but what you don't believe. It is a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. Debaters learn not to solve problems or to win people over to their side, but to argue about problems and win the approval of judges. Debaters focus on the abstract world of words, not the real world of actions.
To me, as a high-school debater and now a lawyer for decades, I think debate teaches people how to be litigators instead of negotiators, and that's a problem. Playing life as a zero-sum game separates everyone into winners and losers, when it is far better for society as a whole to play life as a positive-sum game, where both sides win.
There's a saying in law that in any lawsuit only the lawyers win, and I've found that to be true. My career as a lawyer has involved both litigation and negotiation, but my approach even in litigation is not to win, but to win-win. I'm not a Pollyanna, but I'm also not the debater in high school who is taught to focus on the presentation and to care less about the problem.
Our politics today shows how easy it is to be like debaters. We have a president with experience in the business world and a master of the art of the deal whose natural inclination is to do win-win deals. But whether it is through his own shortcomings, or because of the politicians of both sides, he is instead forging ahead on his own. It's turning into a lose-lose.
We focus too much in our society on competition, and not enough on cooperation. Debate doesn't help with that.
Thanks for this, I wish my academic colleagues have been thinking more about the changes we absolutely have to do in the current environment. I certainly think you may be on to something here, and you acknowledge some downsides of the debate format, but I'm curious how your argument interact with something like this: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-against-debate
I’m paywalled unfortunately (sorry Matt!) but my general sense is that the performative debating of YouTube videos is quite different than the actual competitive activity? Maybe learning to debate well equips people with “dark arts” abilities in some sense, but idk, I just don’t find that a strong argument against teaching debate. Curious if there’s a part that strongly resonates with you?
Yeah I think that’s a tradeoff for sure - probably I’d lean toward something research-centric since you still get the on-one’s-feet anyway. Also maybe it’s slightly less prone to BS-ing since you need to ground your beliefs out in research?
I chose LD, but mainly because I wanted to be able to debate solo rather than need to depend on a partner (oops), and LD was the only format where that was really possible
When I truly first started in 8th grade though, it was an improvised version kind of more like Public Forum, and that worked well for introducing kids IMO. Also, having students in the class be judges and do scoring; I think there’s a lot of merit to evaluating arguments and what’s persuasive rather than just doing the arguing!
Hey nice to hear from you - I'm not sure if we ever properly met, but I do recognize your name. Appreciate you sharing that post - I liked the acknowledgment too of coaches writing positions for students. I had an aside about that in here initially - that really, relying on AI-written stuff isn't *so* different from the status quo as you'd think - but decided to cut it for simplicity. Pretty wild how different debate's plagiarism norms are though from many other academic spheres!
How about Philosophy instead? I too am a fan of Debate and loved it in high school. But I think a large part of me strongly disliked the Sophistic aspect of it, "making the weaker argument the stronger". I think Philosophy (and cultivating epistemic virtues like carefulness and humility) would be the better option, especially after the amplified flood of AI-powered BS.
Yeah it's interesting to consider what might be good alternative activities to debate. Fwiw, I found debate to be kind of where 'rubber hits the road' on philosophy - both in terms of needing to understand the philosophical concepts well enough to explain them to others, and having to figure out which philosophies I really believed in. So if a student came to me, interested in learning more about philosophy and engaging with it in detail, there's a pretty good chance I'd recommend Lincoln-Douglas debate to them as a way to go deeper. (Granted, LD has maybe become even more like Policy over time, and so that recommendation may be offbase!)
I hear you, though I think the construction “the real danger” is basically always invalid.
Let’s grant for a moment that information addiction is dangerous; why would that invalidate any of the claims people have made about how superintelligence is dangerous?
Thanks for taking my objection in stride - I do still not like the use of "the" in "the real danger," which makes it sound like there is only one danger, as opposed to "the nearest danger I'm worried about," but maybe I'm now being pedantic :-)
I wonder why you think they are all potentially catastrophic - presumably you don't think that each of those is, say, an extinction risk of the same likelihood?
On a variety of levels, learning how to have healthy debate would not only be good in the age of AI but probably for society in general. We use to argue and then break bread. Need to get back to that.
On a variety of levels, learning how to have healthy debate would not only be good in the age of AI but probably for society in general. We use to argue and then break bread. Need to get back to that.
Thanks for writing this post! I've met so many people who entered the HS debate -> AI safety pipeline and it's always neat to meet someone else who was involved in the activity.
That said, I think this is an overly rosy view of the activity at present. Debate (especially debate on the national circuit in the United States) has Goodharted pretty hard on some specific technical properties of the activity (i.e, dropped arguments being true, judges being very left-leaning in political ideology, and extinction and S-risks being most relevant under a utilitarian framing). These and some other factors have culminated in the production of some pretty pedagogically unvaluable argumentation.
Bentham's Bulldog has some good notes on this:
https://benthams.substack.com/p/ideas-from-high-school-debate-so
Thanks for the thoughtful response - yeah I think the prevalence of K debate is a lot higher than when I was competing, though the other aspects don't feel quite as new? Totally possible that I'm romanticizing the activity though; it's been a while since I was at a tournament!
Sidenote, there's a funny thing about 'dropped arguments = true', where somehow I feel like it was one of the most helpful things I ever learned for weighing arguments against each other. That is, I started to understand 'Both sides are naturally going to drop some argument, and so how does the judge resolve from there? I guess they'll need to consider which is the more important drop, which means I should make arguments directly about that'
Agreed but AI has so far not had a positive effect in the debate space from my point of view.
https://open.substack.com/pub/fitzyhistory/p/ai-can-prep-your-case-it-cant-save?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Very interesting about the blandness it’s pushing students toward. In my days, certainly there were some “stock” positions that recurred, often with the same substantiating evidence. But not because AI was suggesting them, obviously; other vectors like research briefs, copying successful debaters, example positions from debate camp, etc. Thanks for sharing that!
Having been a master debater in high school decades ago, I found that convincing the judges had little to do with it. What was important was putting on a show. Make the judges feel like you were convincing even if you weren't. In other words, you had to fake sincerity.
Some stories that illustrate:
David Ogilvy used to talk about two Greek orators. After one spoke, the people would say, how well he spoke. After the other spoke, the people said, let us march against Philip.
Coco Chanel used to say that if she made a dress for a woman and people who saw her wear it said, what a lovely dress, she had failed. She had succeeded if they said, you look beautiful!
A British entrepreneur told a story about hearing Neil Kinnock speak at Oxford. Afterward he was telling a friend how well Neil Kinnock spoke, holding everyone spellbound. Oh really, said the friend. What did he say? That stumped him. He hadn't a clue.
Appreciate hearing about your experience - that’s pretty different from mine in debate though, where there were strong expectations of judges explaining exactly why they voted for someone. Maybe different regions/events!
My point must not have been clear. What I am saying is that in debate competitions the judges vote on how convincing you sound, not on how convincing your arguments are. They realize you could just as easily be arguing the other side of the issue, affirmative rather than negative.
Debate teaches you to compete not to convince others of what you believe, but what you don't believe. It is a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. Debaters learn not to solve problems or to win people over to their side, but to argue about problems and win the approval of judges. Debaters focus on the abstract world of words, not the real world of actions.
To me, as a high-school debater and now a lawyer for decades, I think debate teaches people how to be litigators instead of negotiators, and that's a problem. Playing life as a zero-sum game separates everyone into winners and losers, when it is far better for society as a whole to play life as a positive-sum game, where both sides win.
There's a saying in law that in any lawsuit only the lawyers win, and I've found that to be true. My career as a lawyer has involved both litigation and negotiation, but my approach even in litigation is not to win, but to win-win. I'm not a Pollyanna, but I'm also not the debater in high school who is taught to focus on the presentation and to care less about the problem.
Our politics today shows how easy it is to be like debaters. We have a president with experience in the business world and a master of the art of the deal whose natural inclination is to do win-win deals. But whether it is through his own shortcomings, or because of the politicians of both sides, he is instead forging ahead on his own. It's turning into a lose-lose.
We focus too much in our society on competition, and not enough on cooperation. Debate doesn't help with that.
Thanks for this, I wish my academic colleagues have been thinking more about the changes we absolutely have to do in the current environment. I certainly think you may be on to something here, and you acknowledge some downsides of the debate format, but I'm curious how your argument interact with something like this: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-against-debate
I’m paywalled unfortunately (sorry Matt!) but my general sense is that the performative debating of YouTube videos is quite different than the actual competitive activity? Maybe learning to debate well equips people with “dark arts” abilities in some sense, but idk, I just don’t find that a strong argument against teaching debate. Curious if there’s a part that strongly resonates with you?
(Side note: congrats on tenure!)
I really appreciated this take!
Do you have a sense on the best format? I didn't do debate growing up, but I learned a lot from doing 1.5 years of parliamentary debate in college.
Because parliamentary is extemporaneous debate, I learned less about researching deeply from it, but I got a lot better about thinking in real time?
Yeah I think that’s a tradeoff for sure - probably I’d lean toward something research-centric since you still get the on-one’s-feet anyway. Also maybe it’s slightly less prone to BS-ing since you need to ground your beliefs out in research?
I chose LD, but mainly because I wanted to be able to debate solo rather than need to depend on a partner (oops), and LD was the only format where that was really possible
When I truly first started in 8th grade though, it was an improvised version kind of more like Public Forum, and that worked well for introducing kids IMO. Also, having students in the class be judges and do scoring; I think there’s a lot of merit to evaluating arguments and what’s persuasive rather than just doing the arguing!
I'm a debate coach who has writing a lot lately about the relevance of debate-based education in an AI-World.
This is my most recent -- https://stefanbauschard.substack.com/p/no-one-thinks-alone-debate-and-the
I've also been trying to get students interested in learning more about AI through debate -- globalaidebates.org
Hey nice to hear from you - I'm not sure if we ever properly met, but I do recognize your name. Appreciate you sharing that post - I liked the acknowledgment too of coaches writing positions for students. I had an aside about that in here initially - that really, relying on AI-written stuff isn't *so* different from the status quo as you'd think - but decided to cut it for simplicity. Pretty wild how different debate's plagiarism norms are though from many other academic spheres!
How about Philosophy instead? I too am a fan of Debate and loved it in high school. But I think a large part of me strongly disliked the Sophistic aspect of it, "making the weaker argument the stronger". I think Philosophy (and cultivating epistemic virtues like carefulness and humility) would be the better option, especially after the amplified flood of AI-powered BS.
Yeah it's interesting to consider what might be good alternative activities to debate. Fwiw, I found debate to be kind of where 'rubber hits the road' on philosophy - both in terms of needing to understand the philosophical concepts well enough to explain them to others, and having to figure out which philosophies I really believed in. So if a student came to me, interested in learning more about philosophy and engaging with it in detail, there's a pretty good chance I'd recommend Lincoln-Douglas debate to them as a way to go deeper. (Granted, LD has maybe become even more like Policy over time, and so that recommendation may be offbase!)
I hear you, though I think the construction “the real danger” is basically always invalid.
Let’s grant for a moment that information addiction is dangerous; why would that invalidate any of the claims people have made about how superintelligence is dangerous?
Thanks for taking my objection in stride - I do still not like the use of "the" in "the real danger," which makes it sound like there is only one danger, as opposed to "the nearest danger I'm worried about," but maybe I'm now being pedantic :-)
I wonder why you think they are all potentially catastrophic - presumably you don't think that each of those is, say, an extinction risk of the same likelihood?
Interesting stuff but I feel like you didn't really argue for this part:
>I expect these skills to become even more important as AI improves
On a variety of levels, learning how to have healthy debate would not only be good in the age of AI but probably for society in general. We use to argue and then break bread. Need to get back to that.
On a variety of levels, learning how to have healthy debate would not only be good in the age of AI but probably for society in general. We use to argue and then break bread. Need to get back to that.