Reply #149: oh well

[iverglas]

No "formal training" in debating whatsoever. Working class high schools didn't have debate clubs. Actually, mine might have had one; I think there's a picture in a yearbook. But it was pretty marginalized by the time I came along. I think even I wasn't that dorky. We didn't have courses called "rhetoric" and the like that seem to have been given in US universities. And I blew off my one moot court, which I regarded as totally dumb. I recall getting marked down for "forgetting how to address the judges", and getting good marks for "respect" ... when what I had done was, every time I concluded a statement, pause ostentatiously and then said "... m'lords". You try and you try to be disrespectful, and they don't get it.

Experience at building a case founded on facts and the logic that organizes them in support of a position, that, yes.

But here, it's just facts. The only position being: these are facts.