And that’s a bad analogy. Really bad.

Why? School debate clubs are practice sessions, excercises in debate. They are tests of skill They aren’t designed to get at objective truth any more than Olympic fencing is about trying to kill your opponent.

Seriously, show me only a single instance of a debate in the larger public sphere where there was an actual search for a deeper truth and not just cheap shots. You won’t find any.

In the UK, I would point to many of the House of Lords debates, quite a few of the Commons debates (not Prime Minister’s’ questions- which are pure theatre). Then there are the areas which aren’t debates but involve forensic questioning, such as you would find in select committees, public enquiries and the courts.

Is what we are doing here, in the realm of cheap psychological tricks?