Thread by @InformedinSport

The point of debate is not to win, or necessarily agree fully with the other party at the end.

It doesn’t need to be adversarial and the objective doesn’t have to be arriving at consensus

🧵👇

The purpose of engaging in debate is articulating our perspective on the topic, presenting the rationale for our position.

The value comes from hearing the other side’s perspective, getting their insight and considering their arguments to stimulate thoughts and update our model

We can share less than 100% agreement and still be okay.

It is even possible to hold completely different views and still respect (or even like) the other party 🤯

The notion that we two independent thinkers would agree 100% is actually an unlikely scenario.

It is natural that another person would have a different perspective.

In fact if they have the same perspective and share the same thoughts then the exchange provides no new insights

Recent experience has demonstrated it is still possible to engage in debate and have real discourse on this platform.

Perhaps if we adjust our expectations and shift the objective we can have real engagement (even on Twitter) and interactions can actually provide value

We might even seek out others who have perspectives and positions that differ to ours for the value this can provide.

Likeminded individuals might be comforting but by definition they have much less to teach us that we don’t already know