@Dand I’ve found myself in this dynamic many times. I much prefer conversations of exploration than debates. I would define a “debate” in which one person holds a position and another person holds a counter-position. Each person defends their position. . . There has always been something alluring about debates and I’ve spent a lot of time debating. One thing I’ve noticed is they never feel good afterwards. They never give me the sense that I’ve connected with another, shared something together and grew. It would be like hiking in nature with someone and debating the pronunciation of a plant name. It’s just satisfying. It’s like we missed out on all the fun exploration of nature. 
However, debates are super alluring and for me, it takes an extra amount of maturity to be aware and not get sucked into debate dynamics. I can enter an arena with a desire to explore and find myself fully engaged in a debate asking myself “how did I get here”. I’ve noticed if the other person is in debate mode they have taken a position that they are defending and are oriented such that I must take an opposing position. There is a filter processing as “my position” and “your position”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to say “I don’t disagree with you”. 
A few things I’ve observed and learned:
1. In some situations, a person wants to debate for the sake of debate. They have a particular agenda and want to convince me of it. For example, someone who has never tried a psychedelic might take the position that psychedelic trips are just hallucinations and have no value. For me, exploration mode might be to ask “What is a hallucination?”. We could contemplate what counts as a hallucination. For example, there are no external colors - the mind creates colors. Would we consider this a hallucination? . . . Yet if someone is in debate mode, they are not interested in any type of ambiguous, abstract exploration. They have their position that psychedelics are hallucinations and want me to have the counter position that psychedelics are not hallucinations. Rather than exploring this, such a mind would say something like “Show me evidence that psychedelics are not hallucinations. Prove to me they are not”. . . A hardcore debate mindset is generally hyper binary with two opposing viewpoints.
2. Some people are much easier to have a flowing exploratory conversation with. In general, I’ve found it easier to have these conversations with women. More often, men have a more competitive mindset in which they are trying to defend their belief and “win”. On the SD scale, yellow-level minds are much easier to have exploratory conversations.
3. I can get lulled into thinking I am exploring with someone when they resonate or agree with what I’m saying. It’s a good sign when I find myself pausing and saying things like “Hmm, I hadn’t thought about it like that before” and then we start building together. It might flow such as “yea, and we could integrate your idea with what we talked about earlier”.
4. There is a sense of mutual curiosity.
5. There is a sense we are building something together. For example, yesterday I had a three hour conversation with a woman - it was our first conversation. There was this sense that we were mutually sharing, learning, building and expanding together. For example, at one point she mentioned that she continuously stays in REM sleep. This has actually caused her sleep problems since she doesn’t enter deep sleep stages. She mentioned that she is often fully conscious as she sleeps. During sleep studies, the doctors tell her that she was sleeping and she is like “no, I wasn’t”. I love to explore consciousness and I got super curious. I started asking questions like “Do you have dream characters? Is your awareness as the dream character or yourself the dreamer? Can you control the dream?”. She revealed new things to me and there was flow. I mentioned similar experiences in a sensory deprivation tank and asked if it seemed similar to her. Then we entered areas of hypnosis, paranormal abilities, past lives, lucid dreaming and the dreamscape of waking life. We smiled and laughed along the way. It felt good. . . It wasn’t she had to have a position like “When I sleep, I am stuck in lucid dreaming the whole time” and I had to have the counter position of like I had to have a position of “The sleep pattern you are describing does not qualify as lucid dreaming. She me evidence that you are actually lucid dreaming the entire night”. That orientation is similar to debating the proper pronunciation of a plant name during a hike in nature. We would have missed out on so much.