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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate Policy debate is a formal style of competitive debate, characterized by a high degree of "game" like behavior and, most notably, the act of making arguments as fast as possible, so as to literally make it impossible for your opponent to answer them all. Mostly its a high school thing, but there are some college leagues. To answer your questions: - Winning made me feel smart and cool. - Never, but I also don't feel I was right either, really. I mean the relationship to the substance of the ideas in the debate is so tenuous. It really is a kind of high speed game of conceptual chess, more than an argument. - The policy debater takes up and puts down positions like tools. One round you might make an argument you defeated in the previous round. You might argue against your very own position. - As a data scientist (and a scientist and philosopher in general) I'm with you about truth being important (as far as that goes) but policy debate is much more about developing a facility with ideas. A certain detachment from specific ideas is actually very important to finding the true ones, and policy debate helps you see that. On the other hand, it does make people cynical. I see a lot of what is wrong with this country in my training as a debater. Its a thing taught mostly to rich kids at private schools and it teaches them to bullshit, which is a critical skill if you're to lord it over the plebes. The world might be better off it we didn't know how. My view these days is that I'm quite skeptical of strong claims made either way and that I prefer virtue ethics, which say we should focus less on complex schemes to understand and manipulate the world and more on our character moment to moment. |