I'm glad you wrote about the debate failure mode. The clear picture you gave of it will probably help me in future conversations; I'd kind of noticed the phenomenon, and I'd kind of noticed how to dodge it, but much less clearly.

Although I might appreciate reviews of the basics more than most people do. It seems to me there's a great deal that I kind of roughly get on an abstract, "get the right answers on a multiple choice test" kind of level, but that I haven't yet integrated into my root vision of the world. Meditating on the basics helps me, there.