There are like 8 debates total...

So I jumped from Steve Fuller's blog over to that of a guy named Nathan Bransford. Bransford wrote a brief post basically asking the question "Are all opinions of literature valid, who gets to decide what's good" at which point 311 people commented.

Here's what stuck me; this type of debate is really common and happens daily across fields. In fact twice today I heard some variation of this expert v populist debate.

It seems to me there are like 8 debates total:

Structure vs Flexibilty
Expert vs Populist
Discipline vs Passion
Stuff vs Spirit
Bullet Points vs Stories
Research vs Instinct
Individual vs Collective
Lucky vs Good

I'm sure there are other archetypical debates but these come to mind as I type.

Here's why I think it matters.
As you live life you make choices. And however we get there (add nature/nurture above) I think that our inclination toward these debates colors how we choose. Of course it does. The trick is I'm not so sure we spend that much time introspecting on how we approach these archetypical debates. I tend to be disinclined toward naval gazing like this in favor of a more nuts and bolts focus, but failure to recognize these built in biases creates a blind spot in my thinking.

I know this was boring, just a little external processing