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bojangles comments on Many Weak Arguments vs. One Relatively Strong Argument - Less Wrong
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I haven't read the comments yet, so apologies if this has already been said or addressed:
If I am watching others debate, and my attention is restricted to the arguments the opponents are presenting, then my using the "one strong argument" approach may not be a bad thing.
I'm assuming that weak arguments are easy to come by and can be constructed for any position, but strong arguments are rare.
In this situation I would expect anybody who has a strong argument to use it, to the exclusion of weaker ones: if A and B both have access to 50 weak arguments, and A also has access to 1 strong argument, then I would expect the debate to come out looking like (50weak) vs. (1strong) - even though the underlying balance would be more like (50weak) vs. (50weak + 1strong).
(By "having access to" an argument, I mean to include both someone's knowing an argument, and someone's having the potential to construct or come across an argument with relatively little effort.)
My main reaction to this is that understanding a subtle situation requires much more careful reflection than occurs in the course of a debate, or in the course of watching a debate. It often takes 500+ hours. So I concede your point, but in practice, don't I think that it's so relevant — if one is confining oneself to a few hours of attention, then one's prospects of coming to an epistemically sound position aren't very good in any case.
I think that another problem in the context of a debate is with people in often throwing down a lot of arguments. If the weak arguments all come from a single source within a short period of time I tend to discount their arguments (perhaps too much).