> But compromise is often even less accurate than the extreme poles of a dialectic.
One problem with dialectic thinking is that, the closer you get to one extreme (pole) being completely "true", the more likely you are to make a synthesis that is less true than the thesis. (This is even more of an issue where someone else is controlling the antithesis - perhaps a debater or a propagandist. In fact, if you're thinking dialectically, and I can supply your antitheses, I may be able to completely control the results.)
On to your comment:
> Yet, its a common social structure - common enough that we use it without even thinking. And that, I think, is the worst possible outcome - assumption of correctness without correction.
In particular, the idea that "dialectically is the correct way to think" is wrong. This is elevating the dialectic from a technique to a philosophy.
Why is that idea wrong? Well, take the statement "dialectically is the correct way to think". Make that your thesis (in the dialectic sense). Then, if the dialectic is correct, there must be the antithesis. I don't know what the antithesis would be, and I don't care; all I need is that there should be one. And then there should be the synthesis. Again I don't care what it is; all I need is that it exists, and it is different from the thesis. So starting with the statement that "dialectically is the correct way to think", and thinking dialectically, we immediately see that the dialectic is inadequate and needs to be replaced (because the synthesis is different from the thesis, and the thesis was that the dialectic is the correct technique).
You mentioned dialectic materialism. That's even worse. Marxist-Leninist philosophy started with materialism (the wrong starting point, in my opinion), proceeded six dialectic steps, arrived at communism, and then stopped. In stopping, they were untrue to their dialectic methodology. If the dialectic is correct, there is an antithesis to communism, and then a synthesis, and after the seventh step, the answer is no longer communism.
And .. 'wrong'?
Really?
Perhaps it was the social angle, which makes this relevant?
I'm not really wrong, until my friends and enemies tell me I am wrong .. until them, I'm just .. 'passively disengaged from the dialect' .. or, is it not so?
I totally get you on the philosophy vs. technology approach, though, and I acknowledge (comrade) your identification with my desire to actually bend that particular event horizon.
Yet, its a common social structure - common enough that we use it without even thinking. And that, I think, is the worst possible outcome - assumption of correctness without correction.
(Oh no, I'm doing it too!)