DEBATING AND TEACHING AS THE CRUCIBLES OF THOUGHT You cannot get good at boxing

DEBATING AND TEACHING AS THE CRUCIBLES OF THOUGHT

You cannot get good at boxing or fencing without sparring partners. Likewise you cannot get good at a subject without teaching it or debating it. Although — you can amuse yourself with the pretense of untested wisdom, a mind on its own is little more than an echo chamber. Debate affords one greater flexibility in taking risks, and teaching is the test of whether or not you can reduce your ideas to communicable narratives that survive attempts at refutation. Personally I think both are valuable and necessary tools. And unless you master both well enough to test your ideas by both means, it’s hard to prove you know anything at all. There are plenty of teachers without ideas. There are plenty of debaters with ideas who lack rational arguments. But the only test is the successful mastery of both.