A thing which happens a lot for me in debate: I’m pretty confident that I understand the process-which-produced my interlocutor’s position, I can see what specific mistakes they’re making and how those mistakes produce their position. And I do not think the situation is symmetric. In that situation, attempting to pass their ITT is a useful tool to:
(By passing the ITT) costly-signal that I in fact understand their position and they do not understand mine, therefore they should probably be updating from me moreso than vice-versa, OR
(By failing the ITT) find out that I do not understand their position, therefore I should expect to update myself to a greater extent.
Another way to think about it: often in debate, one person just understands the topic much better than the other, and the ideal outcome would be for both participants to figure this out and transform the debate into a lesson instead (i.e. student-teacher interaction rather than debate). The ITT is a good tool for that purpose.
A thing which happens a lot for me in debate: I’m pretty confident that I understand the process-which-produced my interlocutor’s position, I can see what specific mistakes they’re making and how those mistakes produce their position. And I do not think the situation is symmetric. In that situation, attempting to pass their ITT is a useful tool to:
(By passing the ITT) costly-signal that I in fact understand their position and they do not understand mine, therefore they should probably be updating from me moreso than vice-versa, OR
(By failing the ITT) find out that I do not understand their position, therefore I should expect to update myself to a greater extent.
Another way to think about it: often in debate, one person just understands the topic much better than the other, and the ideal outcome would be for both participants to figure this out and transform the debate into a lesson instead (i.e. student-teacher interaction rather than debate). The ITT is a good tool for that purpose.