Angel Eduardo, author and co-host of the Fair Perspectives podcast, insists that we can rise above this polarized moment and have real – difficult but vitriol-free – debates with each other. Steelmaning is for beginners. We’re talking starmanning! How to do that is what we try to figure on this episode. Adaam and Angel argue about the merits of compassion versus cognitive dissonance and how best to make people more comfortable about being wrong. Meanwhile, Vanessa worries that too much open-mindedness could lead to inaction – or even apathy. She also gets a good laugh from Angel’s diatribe about the word LatinX.

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On the agenda:

-Seeing through the Matrix

-Compassion and humility or just cognitive dissonance?

-Censorship is in the air and the Harper’s Letter

-The art of being wrong (or: it’s ok to fight… verbally)

-Who’s this ‘We’ we keep talking about?

-Engineering language and Stalin’s hyphenation fascination

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.