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I cannot speak to the manners of formal debate, but it seems to me that this is a reasonable practice. It underlines and attempts to short-circuit the bias of the human mind. If you were delighted to have a number that supported you, it is that much harder to turn around and argue that the number proves nothing when it goes against you.
That is an intelligent observation. Really clever. I don't agree with being intentionally deceptive just to make your argument stronger. That's manipulation, not truth seeking.
I suppose in the context of the debate, Sean ought to have been better prepared with actual stats of his own for the particular claim. It let Destiny set the frame.
For what it's worth, I think Destiny was right for the wrong reason. The numbers he's quoting are different from the numbers Sean was thinking of, but the numbers Sean probably was thinking of to support the idea that federal funding on defense is higher to the degree that it would tip the scale to make his argument was also wrong. So Destiny uses invalid stats to prove his position, which means it doesn't actually disprove Sean's point, but he was right by default because Sean was wrong to begin with.
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