[caminante]

Summarizing your exchanges below, you can't seem to make up your mind why you can't accept the meaning of the idiom or how you'd re-define it.

Take these two statements, which prove inconsistent:

> why do so-called Devil's advocates always stop there? If you don't agree with the strongest counter-argument, then why would you present it without your own response?

> Who cares about the "completeness" of all possible, hypothetical beliefs?

[lapcat]

Those aren't inconsistent at all.

My point was that there's no inherent value in simply stating and defending one of many possible, hypothetical claims. On the other hand, there is value in stating someone else's actual claim as clearly as possible, and then showing why that claim is wrong.

[caminante]

> there is value in stating someone else's actual claim as clearly as possible, and then showing why that claim is wrong.

You're making my point re: your intrinsic dissatisfaction with a commonly accepted meaning for "devil's advocate."

You're prescribing that people have to not only present counter-arguments, but also disprove the counter-arguments. This is overly critical. They may not have the color, and further, there's no contract for someone to do this.

[lapcat]

> there's no contract for someone to do this.

There's no contract to be a Devil's advocate. It used to be a specific job assigned by the Catholic Church during the canonization process, but it wasn't something that random people would volunteer to do. To me, it's very suspicious that so many people on social media positively relish the role that was once considered a somewhat distasteful but "necessary evil", as it were.

Some people are paid to do PR for Google. The corporation doesn't need unpaid volunteers. If you sincerely agree with Google, then so be it, but that's not a Devil's advocate.