thank you for sharing this sherry!! i came here from your recent ig story. i appreciate how regular you are with publishing. some thoughts:
i disagree with the central argument that competition is pointless. right after you make that claim you give a whole bunch of reasons why competition does have purpose! we are emotionally invested in it, we experience awe, we supersede what is considered humanly possible. are those not end goods? yes perhaps it "makes no difference to the lives of people outside of the competitive community" but does that matter? does anyone do anything that makes a difference for everyone?
i love talking about debate because of course i love talking about debate, so i want to challenge your claim that you "probably could have found [valuable skills] outside of debate, doing something a bit more productive, more grounded in reality — perhaps campaigning for climate change policy or founding a non-profit." fwiw i think most high-schooler founded nonprofits are dogwater and that most student campaigns are garbo + teach you bad social habits, but beyond those examples i think debate provides very unique things! for ex. a definitive community you can give back to that isn't bounded to one ideology (impossible in activism, rarely exists in nonprofits), the competitive aspect that drives consistent improvement; these are things you cannot get elsewhere. we like to think that our skills are acquirable through different means but i highly doubt it. obviously it's hard to isolate causal events but i think growing up as a student fundraiser rather than a debater would have made you a very different person.
debate "is a pointless battle of words with no tangible result or outcome" only if youre evaluating outcomes on like idk increasing qalys for the global poor. must everything be outwardly facing? perhaps it would be morally laudable for us to work on fundraising but i think some potentially selfish tradeoffs (like debating and competing for personal entertainment and self improvement) are legitimate to make.
also i dispute that debate is largely comprised of "privileged, travel-affording students from prestigious universities," i think this narrative is actively harmful given that recent wudc champs have come from ex. bangladesh and the philippines and given that the activity is diversifying rapidly, but to respond to your question of "Should this form of success matter at all?" i think the answer is absolutely yes. its success that requires a lot of effort and is rewarding to achieve. maybe this is an autological argument -- thing feel good ergo it is good -- but i think we should reckon with the fact that we desire quote unquote unproductive things like social recognition (see rooney quote) and accept that it's an intractable desire.
HOLY JESUS Crystal I really appreciate you reading but I did not expect a whole debate speech in response 😂 I really love your counter arguments tho! I’ll start with the premise that this article wasn’t really trying to prove/make the case that competition is pointless, more so a brain dump of thoughts I’ve been having lately about how I’m spending my time, whether that time spent on competition has been inherently valuable, and what, at its core, makes competition so engaging to people. I find the idea of some selfish tradeoffs being morally acceptable, esp in favour of nonproductive desires, super interesting. I’d love to see you expand on that, but imo my biggest concern is that it’s potentially a slippery slope since it’s hard to determine where you draw the line. If I had the ability and time to make a tangible difference in some current global issue but didn’t, is that trade off morally condemnable? Perhaps not, but it’s interesting food for thought.
This whole article also stemmed from this kind of recognition that a lot of debaters go into what I’m going to call “soft skill” professions (eg consulting), and those that don’t often have hard skills outside of debate that they supplement with debate skills like critical thinking and analysis (eg additional data sci skills to be an academic researcher, formal study of the law to be a lawyer) since debate itself offers fewer hard skills. Again, this is not to bash on debate since I still LOVE doing it and love being in the community, but more of a self worry of whether I’m spending time the best I can to try and create something tangible and positive in the world at the end of the day.
I am currently writing this on a bus in Vietnam so if I have more nuanced thoughts I will add on haha
on selfish tradeoffs: i think we have some degree of obligation to ourselves and to respect our personal preferences. it is about realizing who u are as a person. if that means pursuing something fun like spending a couple hundy on debate tournaments rather than malaria nets that's fine. i also think the malaria nets comparison i just used is a false comparison lol those two expenditures draw from different buckets (ie one of personal desire and one of altruistic desire, for most ppl those buckets of desires are discrete). ur right though everything is a slippery slope! i think the only way to resolve that is to establish an upper bound of tradeoffs youre willing to take. it is probably good to make arguments for lowering that upper bound.
i never really understood the distinction between hard and soft skills so i am not the right person to ask here. if you have the worry about whether youre best spending your time then you probably arent LOL and it is a good thing youre questioning it
thank you for sharing this sherry!! i came here from your recent ig story. i appreciate how regular you are with publishing. some thoughts:
i disagree with the central argument that competition is pointless. right after you make that claim you give a whole bunch of reasons why competition does have purpose! we are emotionally invested in it, we experience awe, we supersede what is considered humanly possible. are those not end goods? yes perhaps it "makes no difference to the lives of people outside of the competitive community" but does that matter? does anyone do anything that makes a difference for everyone?
i love talking about debate because of course i love talking about debate, so i want to challenge your claim that you "probably could have found [valuable skills] outside of debate, doing something a bit more productive, more grounded in reality — perhaps campaigning for climate change policy or founding a non-profit." fwiw i think most high-schooler founded nonprofits are dogwater and that most student campaigns are garbo + teach you bad social habits, but beyond those examples i think debate provides very unique things! for ex. a definitive community you can give back to that isn't bounded to one ideology (impossible in activism, rarely exists in nonprofits), the competitive aspect that drives consistent improvement; these are things you cannot get elsewhere. we like to think that our skills are acquirable through different means but i highly doubt it. obviously it's hard to isolate causal events but i think growing up as a student fundraiser rather than a debater would have made you a very different person.
debate "is a pointless battle of words with no tangible result or outcome" only if youre evaluating outcomes on like idk increasing qalys for the global poor. must everything be outwardly facing? perhaps it would be morally laudable for us to work on fundraising but i think some potentially selfish tradeoffs (like debating and competing for personal entertainment and self improvement) are legitimate to make.
also i dispute that debate is largely comprised of "privileged, travel-affording students from prestigious universities," i think this narrative is actively harmful given that recent wudc champs have come from ex. bangladesh and the philippines and given that the activity is diversifying rapidly, but to respond to your question of "Should this form of success matter at all?" i think the answer is absolutely yes. its success that requires a lot of effort and is rewarding to achieve. maybe this is an autological argument -- thing feel good ergo it is good -- but i think we should reckon with the fact that we desire quote unquote unproductive things like social recognition (see rooney quote) and accept that it's an intractable desire.
would love to hear your thoughts on this!!!
HOLY JESUS Crystal I really appreciate you reading but I did not expect a whole debate speech in response 😂 I really love your counter arguments tho! I’ll start with the premise that this article wasn’t really trying to prove/make the case that competition is pointless, more so a brain dump of thoughts I’ve been having lately about how I’m spending my time, whether that time spent on competition has been inherently valuable, and what, at its core, makes competition so engaging to people. I find the idea of some selfish tradeoffs being morally acceptable, esp in favour of nonproductive desires, super interesting. I’d love to see you expand on that, but imo my biggest concern is that it’s potentially a slippery slope since it’s hard to determine where you draw the line. If I had the ability and time to make a tangible difference in some current global issue but didn’t, is that trade off morally condemnable? Perhaps not, but it’s interesting food for thought.
This whole article also stemmed from this kind of recognition that a lot of debaters go into what I’m going to call “soft skill” professions (eg consulting), and those that don’t often have hard skills outside of debate that they supplement with debate skills like critical thinking and analysis (eg additional data sci skills to be an academic researcher, formal study of the law to be a lawyer) since debate itself offers fewer hard skills. Again, this is not to bash on debate since I still LOVE doing it and love being in the community, but more of a self worry of whether I’m spending time the best I can to try and create something tangible and positive in the world at the end of the day.
I am currently writing this on a bus in Vietnam so if I have more nuanced thoughts I will add on haha
on selfish tradeoffs: i think we have some degree of obligation to ourselves and to respect our personal preferences. it is about realizing who u are as a person. if that means pursuing something fun like spending a couple hundy on debate tournaments rather than malaria nets that's fine. i also think the malaria nets comparison i just used is a false comparison lol those two expenditures draw from different buckets (ie one of personal desire and one of altruistic desire, for most ppl those buckets of desires are discrete). ur right though everything is a slippery slope! i think the only way to resolve that is to establish an upper bound of tradeoffs youre willing to take. it is probably good to make arguments for lowering that upper bound.
i never really understood the distinction between hard and soft skills so i am not the right person to ask here. if you have the worry about whether youre best spending your time then you probably arent LOL and it is a good thing youre questioning it