>quickly identify a contradiction or a counterargument and state it confidently.

How does this make this a "contrarian position"? At least I don't understand the negative connotation. To me this makes this "contrarian" at least a bit smarter than the one parroting the popular opinion...

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.

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