Pretty much.
What I find most problematic is that this culture teaches younglings that there’s no such thing as truth. It’s just rhetorical trickery and gotchas.
That’s because that’s how politics works. If you can get enough people to believe that what you say is true and act on that belief, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s actually true or not.
That’s not the WHY. Debate isn’t trying to be like politics, but having formalized competitive rules for arguing is pretty difficult so there are a lot of ways to game the system. It’s not trying to model a broken world.
Is it not? I was under the belief that official political debates have a large influence on the format and rules of these debate clubs.
If not, it shouldn’t be that difficult to verify whether competitor’s statements are backed by evidence, or if they’re made up, or if they’re really opinions disguised as facts.
And that’s at least in part true, because people are taught that there’s nothing true, ever.
The media also react on that. All those “debates” between candidates for example. Most politicians would have to be interrupted every five seconds, because they tell obvious lies. Instead all the commentary focuses on debate style, which is utterly useless as a metric.
Rhetorical tricks and gotchas aren’t necessarily in opposition to the truth. You have to be able to communicate effectively to get the truth across, so knowledge of rhetoric is important for countering compelling bullshit.
My point is, that the debates never even get down to a level were truth has any meaning. It’s the simulacrum of a discussion, were the actual problem is just a backdrop for these rhetorical tricks. And that’s problematic.
Think of them exercises or essays - they are designed to let you practice skill, not actually solve climate change.
