Yeah, I don't think it's useful (except to score [office] political points) to read the least generous interpretation you can. Trying to understand a position l

Yeah, I don't think it's useful (except to score [office] political points) to read the least generous interpretation you can. Trying to understand a position lets you better decide whether or not it actually makes sense, e.g. Chesterton's fence. Although, if we tried to fairly assess every argument we see, we'd spend all our time doing that instead of being productive, so I get why it's often wise to dismiss things out of hand, at least initially. You can disagree with the article, but I think your parent comment is not a fair summary, e.g. w/ respect to bullets 1 and 2: > At first, I thought, ‘This is a really unreasonable person.’ But later as I dug into it, I discovered he was right...This process of conflict mining served Larson a key lesson. “I could have just ignored him, But then I would have missed the key learning, which is that I was the one who was missing context, and needed to refine my approach.” Maybe the parent comment was "conflict mining" itself. Often the quickest way to learn about something is to make a statement about it and then let others correct you if you're wrong. On the other hand, "what is a power dynamic" is a fair counterpoint to that. Jeff Bezos, in contrast, said he generally withheld his opinion until the end so others wouldn't be afraid to contradict him; a powerful person sharing their idea can prevent others from sharing better ones.