I’m rather awkward at dinner parties myself nowadays.

But back in the day, I rather enjoyed some dead animals at my dinner parties.

Oh, unless Adam decides to shut me off at some point, there is a lot more to come.

Bruce, that’s an understanding of “fruitful” that jives with my odd optimism about our government. I drive my friends crazy because I’m so sure the product of the negotiations is superior than the product we’d get if one party ruled.

I read you carefully too, and I only get aspects of where you’re coming from. So far.

Some dead people aren’t really so great at dinner parties. Be happy for the books.

Oh, and remember to invite me over once you make contact with the dead.

This is how I read Popper. He gave the example of getting two groups together, one that ate their dead and one didn’t. This gives you an idea of the context of what he means by “fruitful”. It’s about understanding others.

By the way, I fixed the link to go to the last discussion. Dang cut and paste!

Johnna, I appreciated your input in the last discussion. I read through it carefully and tried to understand where you are coming from.

I’m going to disagree. I think they’re only often unpleasant. I’m going to disagree pleasantly I hope, perhaps fruitfully.

Your “very fruitful discussion” link, btw, links back to this blog in general (how preening and fanciful of you). I thought it was going to link to Popper on the net somewhere, but perhaps you only intended to link a previous post.

The fruit is probably more obvious when you have to work through something with someone from positions of significantly different assumptions or frameworks. The fruit, in fact, is probably prized, because without it the unpleasant discussion is also a mocking waste of time.

Frex, when we interviewed architects about what we could do with our house, no one in the room had the same framework, but it was very fascinating, even fruitful, to see the possibilities in terms we hadn’t thought of.

Of course, maybe those discussions were only fruitful for us, the potential clients, and the particular architect we went on to hire.

Some of the ideas I resisted vigorously in the interviews I’ve since come around to seeing the point of.

Like Vader, I’d rather engage with England (through his writing; I’m not sure Vader knows that Eugene England died young of brain cancer) than with Tanners. Though I’ve done both. And here’s why. Engaging with the writings of the Englands has been more fruitful for me because of important shared paradigms. I can have discoveries about important things that matter, to a level of nuance. From the Tanners, I might get some datapoint of history that all their document-collecting published (unlikely to shatter anything for me, and I’ve gotten new datapoints from England too), or I might come to appreciate how intensely sincere they were, but those fruits are not terribly interesting. Not as relevant or useful or fruitful in my life.

Brush with fame: before I met my husband, he faced Eugene England in debate. My husband wore his ROTC uniform to the occasion.

I already knew you feared muppets, your Dark Lordness, but now this?!?

As always, you have raised some excellent points.

I think Popper wouldn’t disagree with you on your Sandra Tanner and Eugene England example. I don’t think “fruitful” equates to “convincing” from Popper’s point of view.

What I think Popper would say is that a conversation with Sandra Tanner would probably help introduce you to ideas (that would, to some degree modify your point of view, if only slightly) that a discussion with England would not.

Therefore, your encounter with both of them can be fruitful but in different ways. For example, with England it might productively lead you to believe in non-eternal polygamy but with Tanner it might productively help you understand the Tanners as human beings.

The real point being that you can only “learn something new” in the areas where you don’t already agree. Therefore, this implies at least to some degree different frameworks as a prerequisite to fruitfulness.