If a "debate" is a kind of AI/neural network activity this makes sense. The smaller groups could correspond to layers, and one would expect that the level of interchange would be higher in groups of small groups compared to single large group. In this model, a debate is "thinking" where the participants act as neurons. A recent thread on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18700328) linked to a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg about ion channels providing similar functionality to neurons, so maybe we humans can create "brains" as well.