Formal Debates

Debate, including formal debate between two people, is in no way a replacement for simply thinking in alignment with the laws of logic and letting all else fade away when it is not necessary or relevant to a given philosophical issue.  People in general look to conversations instead of reason (one can do both, but few seem to do this as well), so it is hardly surprising that formal debate, a prolonged conversation of sorts where two sides present claims, is more likely to be thought of as an intellectual necessity than rationalistic reflection that is needed to even understand the debate without making any assumptions--and that can be engaged in without bothering to listen, watch, or think about debate between other people at all.

Intentionally waiting to try to come to philosophical truths until one can hear or read the claims of others on a constant basis is a lazy, haphazard method of worldview development that ignores the universal accessibility of reason and the fact that not all logical truths and metaphysical concepts need any sort of social or sensory prompting.  Hanging on every word of some debater without personal reflection on one's own or without rationalistic evaluation of their claims is likewise an irrational response.  It prioritizes language and interactions with others or their written/spoken offerings instead of reason itself.  Anything short of the majority of and the most primary kind of attention being given to reason is philosophically incomplete or outright false.

Listening to or watching debates is an easy way for a pseudo-rational or pseudo-deep person to make themselves feel intellectually deep even if they are not attempting self-guided rationalistic thought at all, enamored by appeals to authority, and in the habit of divorcing core parts of their worldview from how they decide to live.  Since most debates feature irrationalists who are too stupid or inconsistent to even avoid basic fallacies and social interaction is unecessary to understand at least logical axioms and some of the metaphysical and epistemological truths that follow from them, no rationalistic person would truly think debates are vital or a necessity for personal worldview development anyway.

Unless those actually participating in a debate are presenting ideas that they already reasoned out (and since two contrary ideas cannot be true at once, at least one of them did not do a competent job of this by default) or would at least be thinking about whether or not they partake in debates, they, too, are guilty of the anti-rationalistic emphasis on linguistic presentation, social interaction, and appeals to authority.  Reason has no epistemological equal and there is nothing else that literally makes things true by necessity or disqualifies entire concepts from possibility whether or not anyone at all was to recognize this directly.

Someone who is correct on a point is not correct because of anything other than how aware they are of what does and does not logically follow from a concept or verifiable truth.  Truth itself, in fact, would not exist if logical axioms did not make it so.  That the laws of logic epistemologically and metaphysically prop up all things is what makes them accessible to everyone, and thus to look to others as the arbiters of truth is inherently stupid and misguided.  Formal debate often accomplishes little besides continuing a culture where someone's identity and background are mistaken as more foundational than their sheer rationality even though the former are ultimately irrelevant to truth in every sense.  Each individual could look to reason themselves apart from or in the midst of observed debates, and almost none will.