Thread by @Delafina777

It never fails, some Christian/atheist Debate Me Bro is always like “But I thought Jews LOVE arguing!”

Yes, debate is sacred in Judaism.

That’s a useful background for distinguishing whether someone wants to debate to learn vs debate to win.

The two are diametrically opposed. Whether you’re debating to learn or debating to teach, your desired outcome is to lose.

If you’re debating to win, you’re not there to learn.

If you’re debating to teach, you want to lose because it means that your student has understood what you were trying to teach and made it their own.

The paradigmatic example of this in Jewish thought is probably the story of the oven of Akhnai, in which the rabbis out-argue God.

God’s response is to laugh in delight and exclaim, “My children have defeated me!”

That’s the pedagogical ideal for Jewish debate.

If you’re debating to learn, you want to lose because then you will have learned something.

And those debates take place within the context of a *relationship*. They’re not random strangers barging into a conversation to argue.

They’re *consensual.*

If you’re debating to learn rather than to win, it also deincentivizes bad-faith arguments, because there’s no point to them. They’re counterproductive to learning.

And on the flip side, they incentivize care for the debate partner, because it is a *partnership*, not an antagonism.

All of that is pretty counter to arguments on Twitter.

And why should anyone engage with people whose purpose in arguing is to win at all costs, who have no debate ethics?

So no, having a culture that prizes debate as a method of both teaching and learning is not the same as being available to anyone who wants to argue with you.

To the contrary, it actually tends to make you pickier about when to engage.