Coli breh calls out most of these coli contrarians

[The Devil's Advocate]

No, I don't think you can, but I also think it might just be semantics.

Testing an argument/position you believe in by confronting it with counterarguments is "pretending to be against that argument". And that's just part of critical thinking.

For example, if we are both vegan and believe veganism is a perfectly viable diet, and have arguments to support that stance, there is no way to test or reinforce those arguments without confronting them with possible counterarguments that we don't necessarily believe in.
Such as "well, is it true that protein coming from vegetables has poor nutritional value compared to animal protein?".

That's not an argument we believe in, but if we want to be thorough about our stance, somebody has to bring it up, ie play devil's advocate.

Playing devil's advocate is sparring.

So is he @The Devil's Advocate or is he the devil’s advocate to @The Devil's Advocate ???

You can do that without playin' devil's advocate. Just bring ya position with facts and analysis.

devil's advocate

1. someone who pretends, in an argument or discussion, to be against an idea or…

dictionary.cambridge.org

It's more constructive ways to test somebody position.
Discuss what you say without contriving contention in the conversation.

The problem here is the definition he's using from the textbook. What is missing is the origin of the words.

When the Catholic Church would decide who would be deemed a Saint, they had a group of priest choose a person. Saint Pete for example. The "Devil's Advocate" was a priest that was selected to argue AGAINST that person becoming a Saint. Saint Pete couldn't be chosen, he had to also go through a trial. That way, only people who can't be argued with, would make it in. And those who were selected but the DA (see what they did there) won their case, they wouldn't become Saints. Not enough evidence or too much evidence he's guilty.


Whether that priest actually believed that person should be a Saint or not, the job was to find holes in the reasoning. You're not bringing evil to an argument. You don't even have to be a dikk about it. You don't even have to pretend. You can literally say, "Well I agree that the 49ers need another QB, just to play devil's advocate, what if I said Brock Purdy was top 5 because his stats last season?"

And then that person would have to explain why he's a bum OR he couldn't explain and I'd know he was talking out his ass