In school I was interested in debate until I learned some of the rules, then I lost all interest. I expected to find a contest to effectively communicate and apply facts, but I found the opposite - a contest to be better at twisting, denying, or just ignoring facts. An effective debater is more likely to deceive me, not educate me.

I've not looked into it since high school, so I sometimes wonder if I misjudged, but links like that wikipedia one make me think I correctly avoided it.

I've been debating with a lot of alt-right people lately on Facebook and have been studying their debating tactics and how they apply them to support q-anon, and pizzagate, and Trump.

It's really fastinating to see all of these strategies played out in the real world.

I use these strategies to identify what they are doing and cut through the sophistry and attempt to reach the truth.

The nice thing about online debating is that you have time to think about and analyze the others argument vs on the spot debate where emotions get involved.