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Gradual Disempowerment from AI in Competitive Debating

davidafrica.substack.com · 3,229 words · saved by 1 readers

Taking a cue from trumpets, competitive debate might be charitably taken as a pastime where you put in compressed air and childhood trauma comes out.

Taking a cue from trumpets, competitive debate might be charitably taken as a pastime where you put in compressed air and childhood trauma comes out. Sally Rooney, author of Normal People (and one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2022), describes college debaters in an essay for the Dublin Review as “just students wearing ill-fitting formal clothes.” In the same essay, she also details how competitive debate, as a sport, is an environment where friendless teenagers are made successful and popular, how through her (quite successful) career as a college debater, she inhabited an…

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