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 -
this is probably an irrelevant tangent, but every time i see "we optimize for light, not heat" i think "isn't that the opposite of what that is supposed to mean?" i don't remember where i first heard the phrase "more light than heat", i thought it was poetry (emily dickenson?), google says it's from hamlet; my initial interpretation is that we're talking about a fire, and trying to keep ourselves warm or cook food, but the fire produces "more light than heat". ie, the "heat" is substantial and useful, the "light" is irrelevant, misleading, empty. but then you have communities like here where "light" means knowledge/insight, and "heat" means passion/emotion.
it's probably too baked into the community's culture at this point, but i'd recommend everyone abandons the metaphor completely.
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