It is much easier to refute a bad argument than to refute a truly dreadful argument. A bad argument has enough structure that you can point out its badness. But with a truly dreadful argument, you have to try to reconstruct it so that it is clear enough that you can state a refutation.
In the great debates of the 1960s and after, I was once asked by a student, "What is your argument for rationality?" That is an absurd question. There cannot be an argument for rationality because the whole notion of an argument presupposes rationality. Constraints of rationality are constitutive of argument itself, as they are of thought and language generally. This is not to say that there cannot be irrational thoughts and claims. There are plenty of irrationalities around.
~John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley
It is a source of frustration to me, as well as to others, that the effectiveness of debate in changing the minds of others is so limited. Searle's comments, made in the context of a refutation of relativism and constructivism, touch on some of the reasons why this takes place.
Do you have many fruitful debates, either online or in real life? Or do you often feel that all the arguments in the world generally seem to simply end in impasse?