[TeMPOraL]

I always viewed this kind of debates as potentially harmful though. If you award brownie points for "debate quality", as opposed to "getting it right", you may end up promoting eristic over rationality.

But maybe British universities get it right. I don't know, I haven't had the experience. We had debates in my secondary school, and I remember that the best way to win those was to be the cleverest bullshitter in the room.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I think you're completely correct. It's politically poisonous because it promotes a legal/corporate view of the world where you win by being glib, emotive, and persuasive, over a scientific/rational view of the world where you win by modelling and predicting objective reality more accurately than the other side.

It's easy to see how this destroys any possibility of rational policy-making.

It doesn't help that most countries suffer from literally industrial levels of PR effort, media spin, and online astroturfing, all designed to persuade, influence, and manipulate, and not to inform.

See e.g. http://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movem... for a very incomplete list of examples.

The whole point of PR etc is to deny reality. So the idea that the other side might have a point worthy of respect is deeply problematic.

It would be true in a world where everyone had access to unbiased information, deliberately misleading the public was banned by law, and public education was a significant policy goal.

That isn't the world we live in.