Pitching, Debate, & Intellectual Honesty

I’ve noticed that both high school debate tournaments and stock pitch competitions share something in common: the potential (and even incentive) to be intellectually dishonest.

In both contexts, your argument is evaluated in a vacuum: the person evaluating may not have full context and is often just taking your word for it. This creates a perverse tension between wanting to win and being truthful. In real life (enacting a policy, investing) being wrong costs you, so those goals are aligned. However, in debate and pitch competitions, there’s motivation to embellish, which detracts from educational value.

Recently, I’ve become more mindful of this and have often found myself asking: “Do I truly believe what I'm modeling in? Do I truly believe this thesis?” It’s easy to fall into the trap of writing something down and then trying to convince yourself of it afterwards. Going forward, I aim to be more conscientious of this when developing theses and looking into new names.