It's been said many times that
Good judgement is the result of experience.

Experience is the result of bad judgement.

I would add that it doesn't have to be your bad judgement that you learn from. That's what education is about, and tradition. For every bad piece of information the monkeys got from following their predicessors, they also got many other things that saved them a lot of trouble.

It's a balance. You say you like divisive conversations, but you probably don't like conflicts in the middle-east, or the ones they used to have in Northern Ireland. Re-hashing old questions can be a waste of time and overly divisive, but a little re-hashing is essential to avoid stagnation. For me, it was best said some time ago (though somewhat dryly) by A.N.Whitehead

The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revisions, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightnend reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.

In reply to Re^2: Feature Request: Most Divisive Nodes by rodion
in thread Feature Request: Most Divisive Nodes by andyford

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