3 ideas
Before attacking an opponent's position, restate it so clearly and fairly that they say 'I wish I'd put it that way,' then list points of agreement and what you learned from them. Only after this do you raise criticism, which forces you to engage the strongest version of the argument rather than a strawman.
When a writer inserts the word 'surely' into an argument, it almost always marks the weakest link — the unargued premise the author hopes you'll wave through without scrutiny. Hunting for 'surely' lets you locate exactly where a claim is being smuggled in without justification.
A deepity is a statement that seems profound because it has two readings: one that is true but trivial, and one that would be earth-shaking but is false. Its apparent depth comes entirely from equivocating between the two — the reader credits the trivial reading's truth to the false reading's importance.