In debating, understanding the other side is far more important than understanding one's own side.

Even though my opponent has forfeited the last round, I will proceed to rebut his arguments.'If one doesn't understand what they are attacking, offensive debating becomes inefficient.' I agree.'If one doesn't understand how, within the mindset of the opponent's side, their own side looks, they will fail to defend effectively and always have an uphill battle the next round.' I'm not convinced that this actually counts as 'understanding your opponent's side'. The best way to counter every refutation that your opponent could come up with is to increase your understanding of your OWN position. Refutations of your own arguments are not considered to be part of the 'opponent's side', there are flaws of your own side.'If one sees the opponent's side fully, and has observed their own through the filtered eyes of the opposing side's views, they will not only identify which attacks of their side are worth putting on the offense and which are too risky and should be left out' I'm not sure what my opponent means by 'worth putting on the offense', so I would ask for some clarification. Plus, the more you understand your own position, the less you need to 'leave out'. 'see the offense of the opponent coming before they have even been presented and the defense to the opponent's offense can occur the round before the offense has even been presented' Most debates are actually structured in a way that makes this relatively difficult: each speaker starts with their opening statements, then each rebut their opponent's opening and then each addresses the objection that their opponent has made. While it may be theoretically possible to address your opponent's points in your opening statement, it is extremely dangerous since your opponent could simply decide to NOT address this point and then call you out on a strawman fallacy. Plus, as I said earlier, understanding your own position is the best (and only) way to actually do this.'they stand a much better chance of winning if they tailor the wording of their arguments to both attack the other side at the same time as defending their own' I agree with that, but I would like to remind my opponent that he is defending the thesis that understanding your opponent's position is MORE important than understanding your own, not that they are equal as this quote would suggest.My opponent then gives an example of an argument from someone who understands their own side and from someone who understands the opponent's side. Although my opponent is trying to show that the latter is better, all it does is acknowledging the other side's argument and claiming that his own is better. 'The fundamental difference between someone who understands their own side and someone who understands the other side is that the one who understand their own side is attacking the opponent's case from the outside-in whereas the other person is pulling the opponent's case apart from the inside-out.' I, like many people, often compare debates with actual wars, where one side is trying to destroy the other while protecting themselves, but this analogy has its limits. For instance, the notions of 'inside-out' and 'outside-in' are meaningless in debates, they only apply in actual warfare. In a sense, every rebuttal you make is an 'inside-out' rebuttal, since it addresses your opponent's position directly, but even then I do not believe it applies perfectly.Now my opponent may be tempted to say 'I did not bring up the war/debate analogy, you did', but I did so only to illustrate why the 'inside-out, outside-in' argument seems good, but is actually not.'On a final note, understanding one's own side of the debate is actually inevitable if they understand the other side. The reason for this at by understanding the other side, they merely have to backtrack all the thinking of the other side to formulate a combined offensive and defensive strategy to their arguments as opposed to going offensive to a side they have not real clue about and then defending in reaction as oppose dot proactive defense that occurs the round before the offense of the opposition has even been presented.' I disagree; 'backtracking' would only work in debates where the two positions are directly opposed (for example, atheism and theism), otherwise it does not work (you can not 'backtrack' from republican to democrat or from biblical creation to evolution). Also, proactive defense (which requires that you learn the classical refutations to your position) is another one of those things that require a greater understanding of your OWN position rather than your opponent's.In conclusion, although I fully grant that understanding your opponent's position is very important, I do not see any reason to believe that it is MORE important than understanding your own.