people who post takes because they are developing their opinions dialectically

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people who post takes because they are proselytizing

@Lady I'm not trying to do a Dialectics, I just want people to disagree with me so I can understand my own thoughts&ideas&perspectives&intuitions and also their thoughts&ideas&perspectives&intuitions better!

(... and then people don't disagree with me NEARLY enough!)

@gaditb i mean i would argue this is dialectics but

@Lady Look I definitely am not confident that I understand what Dialectics is and what it's doing when it gets used a bunch of the time, but if this is dialectics them I think I still should keep an eye out for which ways dialectics has developed since the Amoraic period.

https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.84a.17?lang=bi&with=all

@gaditb well it is complicated because dialectics is a greek word coined by Plato to describe Socratic dialogues, but it was refined by German philosophy to mean a resolving of contradictions

the way i think of dialectics is this: you have an opinion, and somebody else has an opinion. on their own, each opinion seems relatively reasonable and cohesive. but when brought together, each opinion reveals gaps or unexamined contradictions in the other one. this process of bringing the opinions together allows the opinion-havers to refine their opinions in ways that they could not have on their own

i am not sure that this definition exactly matches either the Platonic or Hegelian or Marxist definition, but it does seem close to what you were describing

@Lady Is the(/a) goal of Doing Dilectics davka /resolving/ contradictions?

Like if I'm just seeking to find, value, and understand contradictions, and not caring overmuch whether or not a resolution happens, is that in the general domain of Dialectics? (let's say Hegel/Marx-type (or are those two also different?), since that's what most people who use it around me mean.)

@gaditb bit complicated i think, because resolving contradictions also produces new contradictions, and also you have to define what “resolving” means

to give a practical example, consider a political party and the people represented by the party. the political party sets the policy, but the people are who the policy is supposed to serve. there is a contradiction here because the policy has to be set by people who do not have the lived experience or understanding of the people the policy is supposed to serve. on the other hand, this contradiction is necessary because it is not an appropriate expectation that your average person on the street be a policy wonk.

so dialectics are necessary to ensure the policy actually benefits the people in ways that it is supposed to benefit them. you could say that if this is successful, this is “resolving the contradiction”. or you could say that the contradiction is inherent and cannot be resolved. but what you do NOT want is for the contradiction to be ignored and the people who set policy to do so without engaging with the public.

so this is kind of the context of dialectics in Marxism as i understand it. it is an attempt to answer the question of how Marxist intellectuals who do not reflect the average worker can nevertheless figure out policies that the average worker will benefit from. so it is a conversation between theory and practice, leaders and workers, and hypothesized ideals and historical experience

this is a different scope and scale than the personal level of a single person developing opinions through conversations with other people. i guess i don¦t have a good answer on whether they can be considered similar or different? it seems kind of different to me but the process also seems kind of the same