&gt;plenty of people use this tendency to give both sides to every issue equal credence and carefully consider both, so they inject some absurd ridiculous view as the other side and abuse your tendency to respect them to gain credence for it.<p>&gt;And it&#x27;s a prisoner&#x27;s dilemma. If you try to be respectful and thoughtful and the other person screams and yells and abuses and strawmans then you will lose the &#x27;debate&#x27; by any metric not implemented by a philosophy professor.<p>Absolutely, and it&#x27;s one of the most frustrating things I think a lot of reasonable, polite people come up against.