...and if none of the parties involved is interested in releasing their opinions to get closer to it, then it is just a waste of time.
I've actually found that often very contentious debates are inculcated sometimes months or years later.
Ideas that I once ridiculed incessantly are now central to my outlook.
Something similar has happened to me with ideas that I criticized a lot at the time and that now I can see with different eyes. But in none of those cases was it a debate that made me change my mind, but rather self-reflection.
I've seen it happen in other people as well.
I'll make some suggestion or comment that gets dismissed as "crazy", and then about 6 months later, they'll bring it up like it was their own brand-new idea!
And of course, I let them believe (forget) I never mentioned it before, because people fall in love with their own ideas and only very rarely fall in love with "other people's" ideas.
It is a very noble thing to detach yourself from your own ideas and let them flow freely without worrying if other people attribute it to themselves. It is putting the ego aside.
It's a little easier when I realize I don't "own" any of "my" ideas (I'm more of an automated information processing unit).
I do. I make sure to let them know exactly how much Virtue they lost.
I find that if I try to tell them "I'm the one who told you that six months ago", they either don't believe me, or sort of look puzzled and say "I don't remember that". I don't think it's ever earned me any detectable "social credit".
Then you found yourself someone lacking virtue.
You also want "Social Credit" whereas that means nothing to me.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Krishnamurti
I'm inclined to believe them, since I've experienced a similar phenomenon myself.
Believe who and what?