>If you care about being less wrong tomorrow than you are today, you have to take this extreme attitude towards criticism. It will show in your writings and in the way you express your ideas. If you want to be perceived as smart and right, you will articulate your ideas in a moderate way so that others agree with it. (This is one of the main problems I have with contemporary intellectuals who always seem to take the middle ground.) If you are searching for truth, you will articulate the most extreme and radical consequences of your ideas, precisely because others will disagree with them and tell you where your ideas are wrong.
I wish it were like this. In reality, your ideas will just be ignored or dismissed as kooky and stupid, if they are too extreme. Newspapers and intellectual publications use nuance because that is what is needed to build credibility. Appealing to extremes may work for fiction but will not work if you're trying to persuade a skeptical reader about something that is factual in nature. It is not that people cannot handle the truth, but if you make extreme opinions and conjectures, your burden of proof just becomes that much bigger. If the goal is to persuade, the last thing you want to do is give the reader a reason to dismiss you outright.
> If the goal is to persuade, the last thing you want to do is give the reader a reason to dismiss you outright.
I think the point this article is making is that writing is the pursuit of truth, not the pursuit of persuasion. It doesn’t matter how many people agree with you unless you’re trying to sell something.
I wish it were like this. In reality, your ideas will just be ignored or dismissed as kooky and stupid, if they are too extreme. Newspapers and intellectual publications use nuance because that is what is needed to build credibility. Appealing to extremes may work for fiction but will not work if you're trying to persuade a skeptical reader about something that is factual in nature. It is not that people cannot handle the truth, but if you make extreme opinions and conjectures, your burden of proof just becomes that much bigger. If the goal is to persuade, the last thing you want to do is give the reader a reason to dismiss you outright.