Opening Arguments
The force we can summon to defend an idea we don’t care about is astounding. A topic as void as the most efficient route to a restaurant can provoke cruelty and invective better suited to a war crimes trial than an evening out.
It’s no secret that, between intimates, a fight about directions is not really about directions. It is a fight about whether you realize I got along fine before I met you and became the beneficiary of your precious advice. It is a fight about whether you think I’m that big an idiot. It is a fight about respect, status, safety, and love. It is obvious to everyone, including the arguers, that the fight about directions is not really about directions.
And yet the assumption that underlies nearly all formal debates is that the fight about string theory is really about string theory, the fight about literature really about literature.