Thanks for writing this up! One thing I particularly like about this technique is that it seems to really help with getting into the mindset of seeing disagreements as good (not an unpleasant thing to be avoided), and seeing them as good for the right reasons—for learning more about the world/your own beliefs/changing your mind (not a way to assert status/dominance/offload anger etc.)
I feel genuinely excited about paying more attention to where I disagree with others and trying to find the crux of the disagreement now, in a way I didn’t before reading this post.
I don’t think I was assuming that, but good point—there are of course lots of nuances to whether disagreements are good/bad/useful/problematic in various ways. I definitely wasn’t meaning to say “disagreements are always a good thing”, but rather something much weaker, like “disagreements are not always a bad thing to be avoided, and can often be a good opportunity to learn more about the world and/or your own reasons for your beliefs, and internalising this mindset more fully seems very useful.”
I don’t think this means we should try and create disagreements where none exist already, or that the world wouldn’t be a better place if people agreed more. But assuming a lot of disagreements already exist, identifying those disagreements can be a very good thing if you have good tools for resolving/making better sense of them. So when I say I’m excited about finding more disagreements, I mean that given the assumption that those disagreements already exist, and would have any potential bad real-world consequences regardless of whether I’m aware of them or not.