Yep. When evaluating a dispute between someone and Pinker I started by saying that I could take it for granted that his arguments are sound

Did you mean valid here? Its the soundness of Pinker's arguments that I am claiming to have undermined, so I'm kind of confused.

I think that my internal argument-evaluation-algorithm focuses most of its effort on premises and treats the subsequent reasoning as a mostly mechanical and straightforward process. Getting enough and good enough data together instinctively seems like the greater obstacle to me, possibly because I do fairly well with formal logic.