I grew up in a family that debated politics over the dinner table in a neighbourhood full of professors and lawyers, which is different from talking about say,

I grew up in a family that debated politics over the dinner table in a neighbourhood full of professors and lawyers, which is different from talking about say, astronomy, animals, food, etc. It was an adversarial, socratic intellectual power struggle from as soon as we could all talk, and it changes how you relate. My own intent with debate is to discover the basis of a difference in principle, and then decide whether that's something we can appreciate, without reconciling it. It's discovery. I'm genuinely interested in people whose perspective is different and why they believe what they do, because the personal experience that led them to that belief is interesting enough to connect over. However, recieved talking points and recycled slogans are boring, and I'd be more likely to sever ties with someone not for what they believed or said, but over the quality of reasoning and reflection they had applied to it to conclude it. The more interesting question is, are there views and opinions that necessarily can only exist without experience or reflection? Arguably that's the definition of ideology, as it is the logic of an idea, iterated - independent of experience or reflection on anything external. Probing to find out whether an opinion is the consequence of experience and conviction, or the artifact of the logic of another recieved idea is the best application of debate, imo. Discovering truth and litigating positions with tacitcs and talking points are orthogonal approaches that are at cross purposes. Public discourse has been mobbed by people trained to litigate positions and ideologies, and not to discover truth, and so until you can determine what sort of person you are dealing with, it's best not to engage in debate in public.