Kicks out of Debate?
I came across this interesting blog against fact debates:
"Universal decisions of fact are extremely difficult to make.
Ultimately, a fact debate comes down to deciding something is either "true" or it is not "true." To say that 45 minutes is an insufficient amount of time to analyze an issue of "truth" (rather than of simple "desirability," which is what a standard policy debate does) is understating it.Every day, in their daily lives, people make decisions about what to do, but very few people decide definitively what is true. To the extent that people decide what is "true" or not, they are mostly deciding that instrumentally, to help them in a decision about what to do. Very few fact questions are pondered in the abstract. If you don't believe me, try this experiment: try to start an argument with someone who doesn't know about what the capital of Sudan is. Very, very quickly, you will get the question, "Why do you care?"Knowledge, to the human brain, is basically instrumental. That is how a policy debate treats questions of fact: they can be disputed, and remain fuzzy, and still render a decision possible." - Ian Samuel
