I appreciate it. I've scoured an uncountable amount of debates over years and its helped me become aware of new ideas.

I doubt I'd have woken up without them

Invaluable. Unchecked ignorance is contagious.

Yeah.

That also means that when the other person starts resorting to personal attacks you can point it out and let that discussion go, as they're not going to be convincing anybody who is reading and thinking once have, by making it personal and insulting others, implicitly admitted that they don't have rational arguments backing up their strongly held opinion.

I do it in order to understand my own viewpoint more clearly. It is a lot easier to figure out what you believe when faced with things you do not believe.

I think about this comment regularly. Genuinely drastically altered my perspective on arguing with internet strangers.