Debating is good for you!

No need to worry about how this is difficult to negate. If I was so concerned with that I wouldn’t have accepted the challenge. I like to challenge my skills. My opponent has rejected the idea of uniqueness being an important concept in this debate. I will prove in this round why it is important, and why this must be at the forefront of the minds of voters. I. Uniqueness In real-life policy debate, which is something Pro seems to value, uniqueness is a common argument used by negative teams. If the affirmative team (in this case DocMan) cannot provide unique benefits to their side, there is no reason to affirm. II. Opportunity Cost Furthermore, opportunity cost comes into play in this debate. Opportunity cost is one of the most basic concepts in economics: for every choice we make or action taken, we give up the next-best alternative. In this case, we will examine the value of open-minded intellectual discussion as opposed to debating. More on this later. III. Problems with debating In debates, the objective is not to learn, it is to win. If learning is a byproduct of attempted victory so be it, but this is not the goal. Debating is a competition before all else. A. Organized Debate In organized formal debates put on by the NSDA, individuals prepare both an affirmative and negative case for a resolution. They likely do not have a strong conviction for either side. Therefore, they are not even doing debate to support a position, but rather to win. The easiest way to win is to encounter arguments you are already prepared for. Therefore, it is actually against the debaters’ interests to encounter new knowledge. When debating you don’t want to learn, you just want to win. B. Unorganized Debate By unorganized debate, I’m referring to debates among individuals that are just casually arguing without structure, whether it be about politics, movies, sports, economics, etc. In this setting, the objective remains the same. You are trying to win. The major difference is that in these debates, participants usually have strong opinions on an issue. This means that they will fight hard for their side, and reject new information contradicting their opinion. Usually they will become even more ingrained in their original position. Therefore, in unorganized debate, pursuit of knowledge is not the reality. In fact, the opposite is true, as “debaters” even reject new knowledge. C. Political Debate* Political debate, whether or not it is organized, is a hybrid of the two aforementioned forms. It shares the common objective of victory. It often has a general structure (presidential debates, bill hearings, etc. ) but not always (you could argue all campaign rhetoric is debate) so I’d argue in that respect it is more similar to organized debate. However, like unorganized debate, politicians have pre-formed opinions on major issues, and just like unorganized debate, they will attempt to prove their own position correct, even rejecting common knowledge. A prime example of this is climate change. Regardless of its cause, its existence is indisputable. [1] However, many Republicans refuse to acknowledge this fact. Debate hinders communication. *This applies only to political debate between/among actual politicians. Political debate among normal citizens falls under “unorganized debate. ” IV. Where discussion gains the edge Intellectual discussion allows for literally every benefit mentioned by Pro in the first round. One setting where this could (but oftentimes doesn’t, unfortunately) happen is in the classroom. If teachers expose their students to open discussion this allows students to listen to and entertain ideas that differ from their own in a non-competitive environment. This does everything Pro advocates: stimulates critical thinking, challenges bias, meeting other intellectual individuals, and encouraging positive action. Something such as a current event classes would also work better to encourage positive action, as NSDA topics are covered either on a monthly or yearly basis. Not many issues are covered. Intellectual discussion can visit more topics and in turn facilitate even more action than debate. To conclude, we must look at this from an economic perspective. By choosing to debate, our opportunity cost is choosing not to discuss, which gives every advantage of debate while at the same time incurring few, if any, disadvantages. Now, so as to not bring up new arguments in the final round and have my opponent be unable to respond, I will attack his constructive here. I. False Cause Fallacy I examined my opponent’s R2 source, and his particular evidence refers only to real life debates on the Minnesota and Chicago circuit. Please note that the benefits seem incredible, but they are inflated statistics. Poor students are unlikely to join debate, so would-be debaters are going to be more likely to graduate even without debate. All but one of the other stats compared the debaters to a random sampling of non-debaters. The same principle applies to each of these cases. It’s not the debate that increases intelligence, but rather intelligent people who are more likely to debate. The only somewhat valid example of debaters becoming more intelligent thanks to their debate experience is how they superseded non-debating peers in their improvement rates from pre-test to post-test. However, this is marginal evidence at best. Again, debaters are more likely to be intelligent and therefore more likely to be willing and able to learn more from pre-test to post-test. Thank you, back to Pro. [1] . http://climate.nasa.gov...