The phrase "light only comes from heat" sounds so judicious. Who wouldn't want a pleasant, decorous argument where everyone respects everyone, no one's feelings are hurt, and plenty of light is generate, but no nasty heat.
Yet, if you think about it, where else does light come from but heat? Things that are very cold give off no light, yet everything that emits light will also be hot. If you don't like heat, you've no desire for light. If you want light, you musk risk heat.
Speaking from my own experience, it is the forceful, honest and clear arguments that have persuaded me, or have at the very least lodged the seed of doubt in my own mind, not those who argue by endlessly trying to flatter me, or search for middle ground, or who pretend to respect my argument more than they actually do.
All truth seekers should expunge this silly cliche from their vocabulary.
I end with the immortal words of John Milton:
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat
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Notes -
There are finite resources. That's certainly true if the material universe. Conservation of mass and energy, etc. But in a metaphorical sense, there is similarly a conservation of rhetorical light and heat.
A "hot" statement that comes in strong with jabs against your opponents does little to illuminate them. Metaphorically like a damp torch that burns, but produces little light.
In contrast, an LED light is very bright yet produces little heat. It produces the most light per inputted unit of energy. Perhaps we should be more like an LED light and less like a smoldering damp fire in our attempts to illuminate relevant issues.
To the small degree that an efficient light produces heat, so shall we also produce some incidental heat. But let's not purposefully produce heat knowing that it comes at an unavoidable cost to light.
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