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?
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Notes -
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?
Not a pair of books, but I find that https://www.realclearworld.com/ and its sister sites do a good job of aggregating news articles and op-eds with dueling perspectives.
Edit: How could I forget the most obvious answer to your question? The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers are classics of political philosophy, if you haven't read them already.
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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.
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