Critical concept for me to work on, personally: Take the opposition argument, make it clearer (stronger), and then dismantle it logically. Not with insults, but with calm logic.
Why don't public schools require a class in forensic debate? How can you maintain a Republic, instead of a #hitty 'Democracy', without a population which knows, and looks for, the difference?
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"In fact, the ability to make this distinction between mere “eristic” and genuine rational argument and apply it consistently in social life is essential to the development of a civilization, that is, a civil society whose public discussions are self-consciously motivated by the search for truth, not merely for punishing one’s enemies. Making this distinction clearly is one of the great services that Plato and Aristotle did for Western civilization. That does not, however, mean that most people either in Plato’s and Aristotle’s world or our own actually grasp this distinction or apply it in social life where winning, sometimes at all costs, is the only thing that matters.
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