I was in high school debate and I would agree with the poster above you. In general, debates are judged based on the stated arguments in the debates, which makes sense. However, what this often leads to is debaters simply preparing rote responses to any argument the opponent may present, and then reading off as many as possible (some even speak extremely quickly, called “speed”).

The trouble with this is that most times, a nuanced or carefully considered argument will be quickly overridden by several generic responses, and when you don’t respond to all of their responses they will argue that you dropped the point and therefore they automatically win.

Debates mostly devolve into a game of tug of war, with very little thought or quality put into the arguments. K’s are in a similar category, and are mostly successful in an attempt to catch the opponent off guard by arbitrarily changing the topic.

Most of the skills I learned in debate have been thoroughly useless when it comes to determining the truth or making decisions. It has made it easy for me to derail discussions, though.