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The limitations of language make adversarial debate a powerful tool for advancing our understanding. It might be construed as unfortunate, but it brought us thi

• stareatgoats 3y ago
  > adversarial debate (...) might be construed as unfortunate, but it brought us this far. I believe our understanding will go, and would have gone, further with less adversity and more "philosophers charity". I'm not sure if we need any "higher dimensional ways of communicating" (whatever that is). But a pervasive adversity in our society and time puts a natural limit of how un-adversarial our debates can be: you can't expect Ukrainian defenders to extend much "philosophers charity" to Putin. The more conflict laden a topic, the less truth (multifaceted analysis) one can expect, and (if we aspire to a balanced viewpoint) that's why we need to keep an eye on bias, not just in war where "the first victim is the truth", but always.