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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Adversarial Reading

I think there's a valuable practice when it comes to reading that I don't see many people use at the same time - reading the same thing but from opposing perspectives. It's easy for anyone to write authoritatively, much harder to write while taking into account the arguments of the opposition.

Are there any pairs of books that would let me do this? Say, if we are talking about topic X, then a book that is pro-X and one that is anti-X?

Conversely, an interesting thing to do is to practice adversarial writing, where you deliberately choose to defend the anti-thesis of something, especially if you agree with the initital thesis, or find someone willing to be adversarial.

Then after that exercise is done, one should observe how intellectually honest he has been and how much is he being deaf/selective to the presented evidence. I find most mottizens to be incapable of ambivalent fine grained discussions. It's a disease.

I you want I can defend/attack ~any position about any tribalizing topic, pick one.