[p-e-w]

Debating is always primarily a game of power and only secondarily about truth or correctness. If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.

But it’s not about truth, it’s about imposing your beliefs on others. And while rational arguments are a socially blessed method for doing so, they don’t change the underlying motivation.

[Erem]

This is true for a very narrow definition of debate though. At work, choosing to debate can make the difference between a software design that solves the problem vs one that doesn't. Deploying code that causes an incident vs lands safely.

In broader life, public debate can reveal new arguments to seeking minds, help influence and educate people other than the debaters. It can even grow the debaters themselves if they approach with the right humility.

That said, many do approach debate in the way you describe. For those of us trying to avoid futile debate in favor of productive debate, the best choice is to detect these bad faith actors, acknowledge the bad faith publicly, and pull away

[goatlover]

> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.

Disagree, if you care about truth, you're not going to just let people spread any opinion as if it were fact. It has societal consequences. That way lies the dark ages, witch hunts, wrong people getting into power. Of course one needs to be judicious in which battles to fight.

[throw4847285]

Ok, I definitely don't agree with this. It's so reductive as to be absurd. It almost reads as rooted in personal resentment.

[roenxi]

> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right...

So... how would someone know if they're right? For starters, if we're going to be serious there are a lot of matters where there isn't even such a thing as "right" because the question is how to decide what to optimise for. But more importantly, if you rely on the inside of your own head to try and arrive at the truth the most likely outcome is slop. One of the best parts of being argumentative is finding out what the holes in a view are really quickly.

There seem to be views in the comments and original article that arguments are to be won rather than undertaken and reviewed. They're a man-vs-self story, not man-vs-man one.