Intellectual Dishonesty in Q&A Sessions

Having sat in a bunch of lectures/debates over the last few weeks, I thought I'd share two things that I think are holding back intellectual progress in these areas:

1) Most questions asked in public forums are just an opportunity for the person asking the question to hear their own voice.  Yet this is supremely transparent to everyone else and is clearly intellectually dishonest.

2) When answering questions, most responses don't answer the question that was asked. Instead, there is a thinly veiled segue to an answer that they've prepared for a totally different question.  Again, this comes across as evasive.

If we were less tolerant with intellectual dishonesty and virtue signalling in these forums - I think we'd get a lot more value out of them.

Only speak when you have something worthwhile to contribute or you can actually answer the question that was asked.

'I don't know' is a perfectly valid response and should not be stigmatised.