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.
What’s an “official” political debate? The government runs no such thing.
Also in general, many debates on TV are jest talking, no winner is declared. It’s the opposite of a competitive format.
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.