You’re right, I’ve definitely made the base assumption that the point of debate is to win. But even if you’re only debating someone to learn (which I did touch upon briefly when I mentioned “epistemological weight-lifting”), you’re probably not going to get much out of it unless you’re actually doing your best to present your best arguments and reasoning, that is, acting as if your goal was to win, even if that isn’t your actual goal. From that standpoint, debating to learn and debating to win should be mechanically indistinguishable.
And yes, I completely agree that debating people far above my weight class would be an enlightening and exciting experience all on its own!
You’re right, I’ve definitely made the base assumption that the point of debate is to win. But even if you’re only debating someone to learn (which I did touch upon briefly when I mentioned “epistemological weight-lifting”), you’re probably not going to get much out of it unless you’re actually doing your best to present your best arguments and reasoning, that is, acting as if your goal was to win, even if that isn’t your actual goal. From that standpoint, debating to learn and debating to win should be mechanically indistinguishable.
And yes, I completely agree that debating people far above my weight class would be an enlightening and exciting experience all on its own!