# Replying to "The Prerequisites of Debate"\[Dface\]

**URL:** <https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-the-prerequisites-of-debate-dface/2243>\
**Category:** Friendly\
**Created:** [September 18, 2026, 10:54pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-the-prerequisites-of-debate-dface/2243 "2026-09-18T22:54:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dface](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/user_avatar/discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/dface/32/3926_2.png) [@Dface](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Dface)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2026, 11:09pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-the-prerequisites-of-debate-dface/2243/2 "2026-09-18T23:09:59Z")

</div>

The title:

> The Prerequisites of Debate

Prerequisites are useful ideas for something to go well. Like, if you’re learning CF and you study prerequisites then that makes CF easier to do. Like, I dont think prerequisites are super necessary but they help a lot. I remember the topic of prerequisites was talked about somewhere in the forum. Forgot where.

I think the title is talking about things to do or have for a debate to be successful. I just dont know what a successful debate looks like. Like, if it has goals what are they? Is it to truth-seek? Is to find if you’re right or wrong about something? I remember @ActiveMind discussed about debates on my topic. I’ll look at that rn:

> [@Replying to "Errors Merit Post-Mortems"\[Dface\]](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-errors-merit-post-mortems-dface/2239/14):
>
> 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, understo…

---

_[View the full topic](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-the-prerequisites-of-debate-dface/2243)._
