Too many people think arbitrary lines in the sand on random topics before science has any means to catch up is a debate vs a discussion. The lens at which you’re looking at it through is one of the most important topics to start off with. The ‘debate’ which follows hinges almost exclusively on finding/arguing for the semantics of your definition.

I’ve had one too many ‘debates’ about whether true AI has a ‘soul’ when people can barely tell me how they define Artificial Intelligence (generalized now bleugh) succinctly.

The more recent one was whether humans have ‘free will’. Meanwhile every three paragraphs or so the other guy was dropping nonsensical memes with figurative ‘gotchas’ while two of us were sharing constantly lol.

After all the fun tangents from natural discussion the gotcha guy started to get a chip on the shoulder like so many of the types do. I had to flat out ask him how he even defined free will and he couldn’t even give me a clear answer lol. I started talking about semantics and he dropped the ‘you know arguing semantics isn’t a bad thing right?’

Like yeah dude… That’s nearly half the reason we make new words to better define things. It’s literally arguing semantics, that’s what half of debate is at it’s essence. People arguing positions wildly ‘different’ from the other person because they refused to believe this WORD/IDEA includes these definitions.

You then get to the point of ‘debate’ when you inarguably come to a line in the sand that becomes yes/no on opposite sides. Walk away knowing that’s why they believe what they believe because that’s the root of their definition.

Then you hopefully wait for science to catch up… or just arbitrarily declare you win!.. then get angry because everyone else isn’t as mad about it as you were so now you gotta pretend like you didn’t have a chip on your shoulder the whole time because you equate being right with your worth rather than being right for the sake of being right or trying to understand someone deeper.