# Replying to "Errors Merit Post-Mortems"\[Dface\]

**URL:** <https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-errors-merit-post-mortems-dface/2239>\
**Category:** Friendly\
**Created:** [September 11, 2026, 10:22pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-errors-merit-post-mortems-dface/2239 "2026-09-11T22:22:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

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**Author:** ![ActiveMind](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/user_avatar/discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/activemind/32/5560_2.png) [@ActiveMind](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/ActiveMind)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2026, 5:17pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-errors-merit-post-mortems-dface/2239/14 "2026-09-17T17:17:50Z")

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> [@Dface](#):
>
> If your goal was to win then why didn’t you?

For the better kind of debates, cooperative truth-seeking ones, then your goal shouldn’t be to win. Rather your goal should be to reach a conclusion and you should be indifferent to whether you “win” or “lose”.

Because when you “lose” you definitely learned something new, but when you win you might or might not have learned anything new.

The reason it’s “might or might not” is because even though you keep the same conclusion about the debate topic you might have leaned new arguments, understood it deeper, learned tangential things, etc.

> [@Dface](#):
>
> A part of me thinks that an inconclusive debate is out of your hands at that point. Like, you can’t change the outcome. There’s “nothing” you could do to make it conclusive. It’s done

It might be out of your hands to get your debate partner to agree about the conclusion of the debate because they are irrational, dishonest, dumb, etc. But I think @Elliot was talking about whether the debate was objectively/impersonally conclusive. So even if your debate partner wasn’t good enough to realize you were right you could on your own make an objective case on the debate topic such that the debate is objectively conclusive.

You can read Elliot on objectively reaching conclusive debates: [Curiosity – Claiming You Objectively Won A Debate](https://curi.us/2232-claiming-you-objectively-won-a-debate)

I also think concluding that the answer to the debate is unknown would also count as being a conclusive debate. The debate could be on some topic that’s at the frontier of our knowledge so it’s hard to figure out for anyone. The conclusion could then be:

> We don’t know either way yet. We have to do further research/debate/thinking before we can know.

I say that because I could imagine someone objecting that we can’t always reach conclusions in debates because it requires too much creativity/intelligence to know the answer. But then we can just conclude it’s unknown for now.

> [@Dface](#):
>
> You were a part of that debate so you were doing a project. You used ideas or plans to achieve a goal. If your goal was to win then why didn’t you? If you tried to explain an argument well then why didn’t that happen? I think there’s a responsibility there for the outcome, like you can make things better.

So yeah, I think you could always do better than an inconclusive debate.

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