The stereotype of ENTPs as being debaters gets overblown a lot, to the point of absurdity even, creating misconceptions among people that ENTPs actually seek out situations to engage in argumentation on their own. While that may certainly be true and there might even be a positive correlation with being an ENTP and being interested in debates, I personally feel that kind of competitive attitude can be better modeled and explained through other aspects of general psychology or abnormal psychology, rather than attributing it to something as fundamental as a personality trait.
What I have noticed, especially in myself, is that we want two things: we want new information and we want information to make sense. That's the Ne-Ti filter, in that order. New information, makes sense, gets accepted by the ego - else, rejected or provisionally accepted. Meaning, any information that is "new" in that it has some unseen "potential" in it that's worth making sense out of (engage Ti), gets sent through the filter process. Once Ti makes sense out of it, the information is categorized away for later, or discarded if it fails to meet my personal standards of sense-making.
When someone makes a statement about a subject that I know a thing or two about, it triggers my Ne-Ti, "does that make sense, or did I miss something when I explored it? what is this person saying, does this information match up with my information" and I start doing a comparison, exploring the potential of the subject or the statement that was made, and analyzing it for validity. If it's at least valid, then it's at least possible, and so I will give it some credit and even compliment the person for being clever and having thought of something I missed. If it's not at least valid, then either they missed some bit of Ne information, or I did - ONE of us missed something - and so one of us is not making sense (Ti malfunction), and my Ti will not let the issue go until it is resolved in some way that makes sense. If a resolution that makes sense cannot be reached, then the issue becomes a persistent problem that lingers in the back of my head, and whenever it comes up I want to either avoid it or finish exploring it to get rid of that dissonance.
I only argue to be rid of cognitive dissonance. When I was younger, I argued more because my Ti was not as well developed and I was not as good at argumentation or analysis. Once I got older, I literally studied debate strategies and critical thinking for years in order to improve my Ti and avoid the many pitfalls that come from jumping to conclusions too quickly, or biases that lead to time wasted digging in the wrong places. Also, having a less developed Ti means I will misunderstand whoever I am speaking with and think they mean one thing when they mean another, creating misconceptions that further waste time during a discussion. With lead Ne, nothing aggravates me more than wasting time exploring concepts that don't need to be explored because we're already gone over them or they "should go without mentioning because they're so obvious."
These days, I argue very little. I don't feel as threatened because my Ti is a lot stronger. I know I'm right because my knowledge lines up with decades of life experience and research and study. That kind of confidence allows me to rightfully dismiss accusations or conjecture that I would've entertained with an argument in the past - I might've felt the need to defend my conclusions and beliefs unconsciously, and thus been compelled to argue or nitpick with a person, not so much to correct them, but to test myself, test my own knowledge of a thing. Now, I know what I know in my bones, and I'm more curious about understanding age differences and noticing the subtle way you grow up and change into an adult around the start of your 30s. It's probably a thing for ENTPs to "mellow out" as they get older, I imagine. It certainly happened to me.