When I was composing the response I was a bit worried that I was using too much jargon. If someone has access and time to experience policy debate I'd highly recommend it, but I'm not sure how much value can be transmitted via mere text (even if it was a book's worth of text -- and books have been written on the theory and practices behind competitive policy debate).

If there are any questions about something that didn't make sense, I'd be happy to try to answer them :-)

Honestly, there are some seriously negative elements to policy debate that go with the positive. If I understand correctly, REM's song "Its the end of the world as we know it" was inspired by visiting a debate tournament and seeing high level debaters trying to flow each other out of rounds with "techno strategic language" that was basically unintelligible to normal people.

Rounds would be decided on "existential risk" level policy impacts but no one was doing anything about it really... they'd just win or lose a debate round and move on to the next one. I once judged a round where the decision came down to whether the affirmative policy would increase or decrease the likelihood of human detection and extermination by extra-solar civilizations stealth-bombing our sun with large masses moving at relativistic velocities in order to make sure humans weren't competing with them for stars 50k years from now...

I think a lot of smart people get involved with policy debate and end with a very cynical view of "competitive" communication.

REM:

Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down. Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament, tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.