If I thought I knew how to solve the problem, I'd have said so. What I'm doing is pointing out that this style of argument isn't really helpful, because everyon

If I thought I knew how to solve the problem, I'd have said so. What I'm doing is pointing out that this style of argument isn't really helpful, because everyone already knows that "debate me, bro" is bad and a problem, so pointing it out as though it were a novel consideration doesn't advance the state of the discourse. What we haven't figured out is what to do about it; in particular, we need to invent discourse norms that are vulnerable neither to "debate me, bro" nor to just contemptuously ignoring counterarguments. Which is hard! But probably not impossible. Is pointing this out as helpful as coming up with a real solution? No, of course not. But I don't have a real solution, so I'm sharing what I do have, which I think is at least slightly better than nothing even if it's not much better. I don't think false balance is relevant here, because that's about the question of how to present a controversy to less-informed audiences, which isn't at issue in this case; if you're reading an internet argument then you probably have a decent understanding of how internet arguments tend to go and what makes them go wrong.