At the risk of proving the author's point, they reference another fallacy: equating winning an argument with being right. Watching the format of many cable new

At the risk of proving the author's point, they reference another fallacy: equating winning an argument with being right. Watching the format of many cable news programs in the 2000s+, they seemed to have fallen deep into this fallacy (perhaps intentionally?) I've noticed that the format of these news programs (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, et. al.) is to line up a set of guests for a debate. It doesn't seem to be for hashing out ideas in front of an audience, but instead it seems to be debate training for the audience. The "correct" view (the one most in-line with the host's views) almost always leads, followed by a rapid fire of dissenting opinions and rebuttals. They're introducing the audience to a new idea, showing the common objections you'll encounter when you share it, and showing you how to defeat those arguments. This seems to be in an effort to prime you for going out into your social circles and sharing their ideas. I don't know if it is intentional or not, but it sure is a good way to increase the reach/influence of their news program by sending their viewers out into the world to spread the good news. Anecdotally, at the beginning of COVID (right after I made the call to self-isolate) I stopped consuming all news and focused on work. I noticed that subsets of my social circles (many of whom were completely isolated from one another - no interaction) were all using almost _identical_ talking points. They'd spontaneously throw them out into a conversation with no prompt. Week over week, the talking points would change but these subsets of my social circles would stay consistent - the same people saying the same things. Once they brought up a talking point, you could nearly chart the conversation as a decision tree and I could fairly well predict what someone was going to say ahead of time based on previous conversations! Turns out - what these subsets had in common was the news network they preferred. They had watched someone ramble off a talking point on the news, memorized how the debate evolved, and were trying out the debates themselves in the real world. I think the world was on fire and it was really important to them that they _figure it out_. What should be done, what should they do, what is safe and what is not. Intentionally or not, the debate format of these news networks was being used by the folks in my social circles to get to "truth" by winning arguments. The only problem? Winning an argument doesn't mean you are right! It just means you're better at arguing.