I'm accustomed to listening to regular speech at 2-3x speed, but apparently that's entirely different than listening to a human try to speak 2-3x faster than normal, because I could barely pick intelligible syllables out of that mess.

This is such an example of getting what you incentivize, not what matters.

This is hilarious and reminds me of when I was exactly that age, and learning to spit out Busta Rhymes's "Break Your Neck" [0] at full speed.

When Busta makes more intelligible listening than the arguments of your debate team, you know debate is broken.

[0]: Start 2 minutes in, give it a try: https://youtu.be/W7FfCJb8JZQ?feature=shared&t=120

A small step for a man, a giantleapfrogmankind.

"Because we raise the trigger and only two carrying noodles, and only two can announce in this network but their excess cites their examine this places where the apparatus of military power torches the ground"

He makes an intriguing point.

Hamdiddle-eedah-hamdiddle-ah (do do do do dodododo expi-ali-do-cious)

What is the point of that? They're incomprehensible. (For those who haven't watched it: the video just shows people talking very fast, it doesn't explain why, kind of implies it's somehow good or impressive.)

The point is to win debate tournaments. In particular, it is (or at least was, when I competed in policy debate in high school and college in the 00s) strategically advantageous to maximize the number of distinct arguments, each with their own set of supporting evidence (usually read verbatim from a prepared excerpt of a news article or authoritative reference or whatever), you make within the allocated time. This incentivizes talking extremely quickly, which requires a fair bit of practice to become proficient at (and to understand).

And the judges of these tournaments not only understand it too (I can understand an opponent understanding if they've practiced the same thing) but seriously value it in scoring?

Again/stepping back: what is the point of winning a debate tournament like this, or that values this 'debate'?

What’s the point of winning a chess tournament or any other intellectual game/sport?

What's intellectual about slurring some words really quickly?

The equivalent would be speed chess, wouldnt it? There is nothing intellectual about speaking as fast as possible.

> And the judges of these tournaments not only understand it too (I can understand an opponent understanding if they've practiced the same thing)

Generally yes, although a good team will slow down and speak more or less like normal people if they have a so-called "lay judge" who wouldn't be able to understand them going at full speed.

> but seriously value it in scoring?

You don't really get "scored" on how fast you speak (there's no points system), but, as I mentioned, there are strategic reasons to speak quickly.

For instance, a time-honored strategy is to spew out a huge number of roughly-orthogonal arguments (e.g. "my opponent's policy failed to support the resolution we are debating this tournament, and thus shouldn't win for procedural reasons." "my opponent's policy would destabilize the Kashmir conflict and thus lead to global thermonuclear war." "my opponent's policy would preclude this alternative policy I am now presenting, and my policy is better, ergo my opponent's policy is bad in terms of opportunity cost." and so on), and then circle back later in the debate and further develop any arguments your opponent failed to adequately address (perhaps because they can't speak as fast as you).

An interesting counter-example from when I was actively debating is that at least one team on the national circuit was arguing (somewhat successfully, if I remember right) that speaking fast was a reason to actively vote against a team. The rough gist of the argument was something along the lines that being trained to speak quickly (and have the huge amount of prep-work required to really get value out of the skill) was something really only accessible to affluent/"privileged" kids (although that latter term was a couple years away from entering the common lexicon, I think), and then connecting it back to the central topic of that debate season so as to undermine whatever position the other team had originally presented (but, of course, pointing out that the impact of their argument was occurring in the real world, right now, contra the assumed fiction of their opponent's policy proposal or whatever, and thus a more urgent reason to vote for them).

> what is the point of winning a debate tournament like this, or that values this 'debate'?

For the most part, it's a fun and challenging game for the people involved, the same reason people play chess or go bowling. There's a lot of work and creativity that goes into preparing for a tournament, and the debate rounds themselves reward being able to think quickly on your feet and work well with your debate partner. You get a lot of practice at speaking in public, to a hostile audience no less, which is imo an incredibly valuable life skill (and can be very exciting).

not even Idiocracy predicted that one.

These students are probably intellectually gifted, they're just playing a stupid game for the sake of an item on their resume.

I question the intellect of anyone engaging in silly games with the sole purpose of impressing other people.

Seems like a competition that started reasonably and mutated into nonsense over time as the rules were exploited (and never modified, I guess). If it's an established debate style and offered to kids as legitimate you can't blame them. Kids do what is available to them.

Everyone has choices to make in life.

What the fuck is wrong with the people running these debates that they reward these techniques?

It is quite strange. One would think a judge would easily throw this out.

I mean there is probably not a specific rule I could point to that a high school athlete couldn't ride a bike or a motorcycle in a 400m track run either.

There is probably not a specific rule that you can't shoot the shot put out of a canon either.

I would just assume the judges have the slightest bit of common sense.

> I mean there is probably not a specific rule I could point to that a high school athlete couldn't ride a bike or a motorcycle in a 400m track run either.

There most definitely is such a rule, and there most definitely are people who have tried to do that - and been the cause of the original rule wording ; and others who still have tried to do so by "creatively interpreting" said rule.

Have you met humans?