I don't even think he sees conversation as adversarial, tbh (shit, I like a good argument, sometimes). I think he thinks he can win at having conversations. Like, "you mentioned five Great Men in this conversation, I meaningfully invoked six. I conversationed better."
To me it's that phrase - 'bare minimum'. Like it's not just about better - there's a desire to establish who is excluded from 'conversation', whose thoughts may be safely discarded because they can't conversation as well, which is where I get the adversarial. Which is what makes the Great Men --
-- rubric so brainbreaking, for me. 'If you cannot parrot this many things verbatim, your thoughts are irrelevant.' None of those guys were doing that.