To be fair, we're talking about a very specific, competition, high school debate format. Not the more pure phiilisophical kinds of debate. The former is more like a sport and the "athletes" are simply minmaxing the game. The goal and how you gain point do not necessarily reflect real world values.

We can certainly discuss if they should and how we can encourage/discourage certain tactics, and it feels the article focuses on that. Not so much the comments here.