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The smarter thing to do would be to steelman the original position and not assume that the weakest of counterarguments — stated confidently and without much further analysis — sufficiently refute it.

I like this notion of being contrarian in what it means to be contrarian.

Was not lost on me...

"on the contrary, it was not lost on me..."

on the contrary, it was not lost on me...

>To me this makes this "contrarian" at least a bit smarter than the one parroting the popular opinion...

If it is kneejerk contrarianism how is it smarter?

Because they spotted a contradiction in the original argument that the other person did not consider before making their argument?

It's like reading an entire article and pointing out a typo without engaging with any of the context. It's easy to find a single fault and point it out loudly, but if you don't even try to engage with the intent of the message, you aren't providing anything of substance.

I would not consider typo to be a contradiction.