I had to take a university exit exam recently to prove I could write an essay. An SF Chronicle writer made the argument that, because he was a professional with inside sources and years of training that worked full-time at his craft, his writing was worth more than that of an amateur, and that the Chronicle should charge for its online content, and that newspapers generally should do so, to distinguish them from free, amateur news sources. I had to either agree with him or disagree.
I thought it was a great topic. I disagreed, and laid out all of my reasons. First, many important stories (think the Dan Rather scandal recently) are broken by bloggers and not newspaper writers, and blogs also provide the opportunity for people with inside views of an event to write from their own perspective and not even have their stories mediated by a reporter in the first place. Second, the entire reason we have freedom of the press in the this country is the importance of the free exchange of and access to information to the workings of a democracy. An informed citizenry is essential if this American experiment is to continue working. Notably, the persons most likely to not pay for online content if given the choice between that and free content - those without means; read: youth - are those most susceptible to demogoguery and most likely to be ideological naive. If the writer truly believes newspaper content is better, then charging for it unintentionally excludes those most in need of it, which is almost certainly not what he wants to do. Furthermore, newspaper content is available for free regardless of whether the paper's website charges or not - at the local public or university library. Charging for the web content thus unintentionally discriminates against those without library access, forcing them to either pay for or be deprived of something that everyone else has free access to. Finally, newspapers and blogs alike have a common source of revenue - the selling of advertising space. The fact that both are free to view creates a natural meritocracy whereby, if one desires profit at all, it comes because of the number of viewers, may the best content profit most, rather than that which charges.
No equivocation, and the position was clearly explained and carefully thought out. I received a perfect score on the exam, just as I did on the written portion of the GRE.
Of course, my argument isn't perfect, and I could have written an equally convincing essay taking the opposite side, but that isn't the point. These quesions are not true/false questions. They aren't testing you on whether you can generate truth. They're testing to see how clearly you can formulate a consistent and convincing argument, in keeping with the advocacy model of public discourse. One person does not figure out the best way to do something himself. One person formulates one position as best as he can, and another person formulates the other position, and may the best one convince the most people. It's the way things get done outside of the world of science, where strict, clear-cut answers just aren't going to be found.
The topics HAVE to be inane in order to ensure there isn't any bias against someone who has a very strong opinion on a real issue. The problem is, the more inane the topic, the harder it is sometimes to give an example and counterexample when you're sitting there going, "This is just too stupid to give any thought at all." 
