Most of Gorgias’s young students assumed that it was best to be on the winning side of a debate, and they wondered if Socrates was joking. The goal of philosophical debate, or dialectic, which is about truth and knowledge, is typically at odds with that of rhetorical debate, which is more about “winning” approval from an audience. Socrates believed that, when it comes to philosophical debate, it was better to lose an argument, for the simple reason that the loser is the one who is most likely to benefit by having their errors corrected, and thereby gaining in knowledge.
