So thanks for this and the previous entry (Misere), because I can see you trying to think further about our previous exchange in these entries.

But if I can keep pushing a bit, two further things to consider:

1) If you're never in danger yourself of being persuaded, it's not entirely clear why you want to know what the other fellow thinks and why he thinks it. It's telling that the way you render this, the only outcome is that you come out with information that supports your preferred position, with that reward--that you're not really in danger yourself of having your own prior position unsettled, challenged, transformed.

Or maybe sometimes it's just the pleasure of conversation--but that's part of what I'm prodding you about. If it's just about the pleasure of conversation, the stakes have to be lower, the rhetoric different. I find debates pleasurable when I'm just shooting the shit with someone, throwing out possibilities, playing a role, being devil's advocate. I wouldn't expect someone else to find it fun to converse with me if I made every conversation into a series of itemized demands, if I made disagreement with me into a judgement of the inadequacy of the other person not just of their position, but of their entire social world. Taking pleasure in argument is closely aligned with taking pleasure in diversity: the delight in part is with difference of viewpoint, difference of point of origin, difference of situation and circumstance.

2) Within the really specific world where you're trying to talk about valuing diversity--the buyers who value one vision or definition of organics, which you see as knee-jerk. This is where valuing diversity gets real: it's not an argument about biochar. It's an argument about really different practical epistemologies, different ways of thinking. What do we do when we're dealing with someone who just thinks about what makes something "organic" in a way really different from us, who isn't interested in the same kinds of information or tests or data? If the practical outcome is the same (they still buy the calves), does it matter? Can we learn to think as another thinks, or at least understand how they think from the inside out? Doesn't that require checking our own certainties at the door for a while? When do I know I'm dealing with an epistemology that isn't just different from mine, but is actively incompatible with the way I think and want to live? (e.g., when is another epistemology about 'organic' going to change your ability to farm as you think best because the practical outcomes are different, and no one wants your calves? Or because it leads to changes in regulatory regimes? Or the fertilizer you want to use disappears from the market, etc.) It's not just that too much self-doubt is hard, but that at some point, you end up in a situation where you're blindsided because you've treated all difference as the same, or treated your own views as if they're no better or worse than any other views.

See This Year's Girl where I say:

I argue with Oliver. I don't bother to argue with those who are deeply ignorant or plainly stupid. Real argument is risky since you must actually listen to the other fellow rather than just waiting politely for your turn to speak again, and so you might be persuaded, might have to change your views, and that can wreak havoc.

I wasn't just blowing smoke up Oliver's skirts, I was restating a basic approach to conversation that might not have been apparent to Oliver. He's a gentleman. I am not. It seemed useful to plainly describe what I was up to.

You aren't a gentleman either, and we have been having this argument for more than 10 years, so I wonder why you keep dragging out these obviously false charges against me. My guess is that you are just pig wrestling, but you aren't doing it right. You have to actually listen and argue back with insight in order to advance knowledge and insight. Accuse me of sins of omission and commission that I have actually done - there are plenty to choose from.

This can be work, and I have no illusions that you have some obligation to do such work. It's unlikely to benefit you but it might benefit me and perhaps the other two fellows who are listening.

I'm well aware of just how dangerous this hobby of mine can be, and not just for me. I avoid those who are too unbalanced, such as those religious fellows I spoke of, since undermining their certainties with vigorous conversation could cause a wreck. We can engage about small things such as ag methods, but I'd never play with them about their core beliefs since it would create an obligation. If I wreck their beliefs then I have to stay and see them through the long, nasty work of rebuilding.

I don't worry about you. You can take whatever I can dish, give a lesson or take one, but you'll have to do better or we won't accomplish anything, much less have any phun.

You've got a long record of setting me up to be someone I'm not, or reading into my arguments something I had no intention of saying, or pouting because somehow I've failed to be exactly what you require me to be, or suggesting that I'm just one of those libruls with Bush Derangement Syndrome, etc. Pot and kettle, you know?

So what? (That's an allusion to your own arguments about the proper role of a generalist.)