Debating is good for you!

I hope it made for a better debate than most onlookers expected. Now let's get into my closing remarks. Points of ClarificationIt is a logic-based argument that most debaters are strong students before joining, else thy would not be likely to join an academic activity. This stands. My claim that Pro's statistics were inflated is due to the previous statement. If strong students join debate, they are going to outperform their peers. That would've happened with or without debate. The same response applies to my opponent's round 3 evidence about the SAT. Debaters are, on balance, going to be smarter than their peers. This is not caused by debate. Key Concession by Pro". .. it is the person that makes the debate, meaning that you may not get the benefits of debate if you debate with a casual or ignorant debater. " -DocManPro essentially conceded here that debating is not inherently good for you. Even in Pro's mindset, you must be debating a good opponent for debating to be good for you. "Many of the contender's statements about unorganized debate are true, such as: the objective is typically to persuade the opponent, many people do reject new information, etc. " -DocManHere Pro conceded that debate that is not interscholastic is not beneficial to you. Therefore he reduced his argument to only interscholastic debating. Remember this when voting. Voting IssuesEffects of interscholastic debating:Disproven through false cause fallacy used by Pro in his evidence. Logically, intelligent individuals will join an intellectual activity. The only way Pro could've won this is if his evidence compared debaters' GPAs, test scores, etc. before joining debate to their own scores after joining debate. The closest Pro came to this was the pre/post test evidence, which is also refuted by the logic that debaters are smart individuals and would be able to absorb new knowledge better than the average student their own age, which the control group is. No Pro evidence was able to explicitly prove a cause and effect relationship between the two. Also please remember: the objective of debating is to win. You can be spewing ideas that you don't find true in the slightest ;) and still reach the goal of a debate. Victory. Effects of unorganized/political debating:Nonexistant, see Pro's second concession mentioned earlier. Pro admits no benefit to this type of debating. Uniqueness:This is not a real-life policy debate. This is true. However, Pro is implicitly advocating a plan. By saying "Debating is good for you! " Pro is in a sense acting as an advocate to get more people to debate. Therefore, in order to say people should debate, Pro mus provide unique benefits of debate, which has not yet happened. Opportunity Cost:Pro has left the economic approach involving opportunity cost uncontested. Therefore as long as it has been proven that discussion is better than debate, Con wins this round. This has been proven, as Con showed that discussion removes the competitive nature from debate, allowing idividuals to be less likely to entrench themselves in their position and more likely to be open to new ideas. As debate replaces discussion as a medium, it is obvious that the comparative costs of debate outweigh any and all benefits. As Con has won each of the key voting issues, there is only one way to vote. Thank you! Conclusion:Thank you again, DocMan for a unique resolution. I have enjoyed negating this.