The debate community seems to use language that in many ways is more distilled than normal conversation. That is, the true function of things such as small talk is to signal intelligence, status, skill, etc. and the function of "debate" is to signal allegiance to your tribe and to point out norm violators etc, as opposed to say truth see…
The debate community seems to use language that in many ways is more distilled than normal conversation. That is, the true function of things such as small talk is to signal intelligence, status, skill, etc. and the function of "debate" is to signal allegiance to your tribe and to point out norm violators etc, as opposed to say truth seeking. Once you realise this it's easy to see how a group of wordcels optimising for language's true social function come to the conclusion that something something people of colour something something metaphysical nothingness etc. is the best most pure form of debate and discussion. Similarly if you observe ordinary people discussing politics and such you can see the less pure less dense version of this phenomenon, its only really a small minority of people who are actually interested in using language as a way to exchange information or engage in truth seeking. The interesting question would be how someone in this category could interface with normal people to aquire desirable ends, we probably have to engage with their wordplay to some extent.
The debate community seems to use language that in many ways is more distilled than normal conversation. That is, the true function of things such as small talk is to signal intelligence, status, skill, etc. and the function of "debate" is to signal allegiance to your tribe and to point out norm violators etc, as opposed to say truth seeking. Once you realise this it's easy to see how a group of wordcels optimising for language's true social function come to the conclusion that something something people of colour something something metaphysical nothingness etc. is the best most pure form of debate and discussion. Similarly if you observe ordinary people discussing politics and such you can see the less pure less dense version of this phenomenon, its only really a small minority of people who are actually interested in using language as a way to exchange information or engage in truth seeking. The interesting question would be how someone in this category could interface with normal people to aquire desirable ends, we probably have to engage with their wordplay to some extent.
Agreed!