My Experiment in Response Essays

Hegelian Dialectic, Meaningful Content, Defense Against Being ChatGPT'd

Lost in the sea of content and really not knowing how to find my unique POV.

But I noticed that in conversation I tended to have a very pointed POV. Which bothered me.

I kept asking myself, Am I just being deliberately contrarian?

I didn't think so. Because it's hard enough for me to express a position I do believe in. The thought of trying to defend something I didn't just for it's own sake was super meh.

I kept trying to suppress this instinct. I wanted to just say, "That's interesting. AND how about this similar idea?"

Other people do that way better than I do.

Then I realized that I wasn't trying to be oppositional.

I was trying to be synthetic.

What does that mean?

Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

This is according to Hegel, whom I never read and always feel this guilt burden because I know I never will^[1]

Another way:

"Dialectics” is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides.

Aha!

I figured it out. And in so doing I figured a way to create more safety in these conversations.

I was NOT interested in being oppositonal.

I WAS interested in Truth Seeking.

And I believe that dialectic is a powerful way to do so.

This is different from a debate which Hegel likens to Plato's dialectic. This is very incremental and not very interesting.

Hegel writes that dialectic produces:

a new concept but one higher and richer than the preceding—richer because it negates or opposes the preceding and therefore contains it, and it contains even more than that, for it is the unity of itself and its opposite.^[2]

This is what makes it interesting. The intent is seeking something better and closer to truth.

Now it is easier to do than ever on the Internet.

There's plenty of content (information) but right now (April 2023) ChatGPT seems good at understanding natural language requests to retrieve information and respond using natural language.

But it's not capable of being antithesis to existing knowledge to create synthesis.

So I am going to try to pick people who write content that a) is short enough that I can digest and come up with antithesis; b) presents a POV (because of it is just summarization, gonna be hard to provide an alternate perspective)

I remember when blogs would have links to other blog posts actually responding.

I suppose this is archaic and inefficient given the ease of just commenting on Twitter.

But I haven't seen a Twitter comment result in meaningful synthesis after dialectic.

Takeaways

1. Dialectic has a goal of taking someone's POV and providing an alternate, opposing point of view with the goal of Synthesizing something different and hopefully better
2. Perhaps a better way to engage is, "I like what you said. Would you mind if I riff on it by taking an opposing perspective with the goal of coming up with something new and different?"
3. Find the POV in both the original statement and in the counter-argument