Cry foul and steer the conversation back to your rhetoric. That sounds familiar.
The purpose of playing devil's advocate is to explore a position by taking the opposite view with the aim of evaluating it, exposing weakness, and strengthening arguments. Ultimately, the devil's advocate seeks to improve the position they are arguing against. It doesn't mean doubling-down on bad arguments, being antagonistic, and refusing to ever concede any point made by the opposing side. It certainly doesn't excuse name-calling and personal abuse. If you are indeed playing devils advocate, then you are just as bad at it as you are at denialism.
You don't seem to realize how transparent you are. I know, to you, when you say "please enlighten me to experimentation that proves the contrary or you have nothing to add but sophistry" it sounds to you like you are putting me in my place, but to the rest of us it's clear that you are desperate to stick to the rhetoric you are comfortable with and will simply label anything else as sophistry, sight unseen, in an attempt to poison the well. Your intent is to control the scope of the conversation. It's like when you ask a magician to do a trick from a different angle and they refuse. It's because their trickery will only work when framed in a very careful and particular way.
You want us to play on your field using your rules because that's the only way you can feel like you're out-playing the big boys, but when people don't play like you want them to, you do the only thing you have left, which is call them names and shit on them. You aren't playing devil's advocate, you're playing devil's
assailant.
