Cooperative Dilemmas in Rational Debate

As an epistemic activity, rational debate and discussion requires cooperation, yet involves a tension between collective and individual interests. While all participants benefit from collective outcomes like reaching consensus on true beliefs, individuals face personal costs when changing their minds. This creates an incentive for each debater to let others bear the cognitive burden of exploring alternative perspectives. We present a model to examine the strategic dynamics between debaters motivated by two competing goals: discovering truth and minimizing belief revisions. Our model demonstrates that this tension creates social dilemmas where strategies that are optimal for individuals systematically undermine the collective pursuit of truth. Paradoxically, our analysis reveals that increasing debaters' motivation to seek truth can sometimes produce equilibria with worse outcomes for collective truth discovery. These findings illuminate why rational debate can fail to achieve optimal epistemic outcomes, even when participants genuinely value truth.