Pretty incredible exchange you are having with people right now where you are just straight up ignoring valid points or sweeping them aside as idealism...
Think of it as a free lesson in self-advocation if you'd like.
I'm engaging in the conversation by bringing my points to the table. I see it as an idealistic proposal that doesn't match my understanding of reality. It is very plausible that I am wrong - please explain to me how you disagree, I'm happy to listen. Seriously.
Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point. It's your right after all.
In my experience, "high-friction environments where people are encouraged to compete and fight to support their ideas, where they feel valued for fighting for themselves, rather than patronized..." are dominated by people who enjoy competing and fighting for their own sake. The value of any ideas presented frequently takes a backseat to who can win the political fight. (This is actually one of the most common, and most frustrating, failure modes of academia and one of the major reasons I'm no longer interested in being in that environment.) Or, the value of the ideas takes a backseat to who benefits most from the one chosen. Or, any of a dozen other reasons irrelevant to the ideas.
You may regard an alternative as "idealistic", and it may be, but the alternative is how many existing environments are supposed to work, if you press those involved hard enough, and is frequently pretty bad at sorting ideas.
>Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point.
Exactly. I am very happy to be proven wrong, given the arguments against my position are good. A lot of people shy away from criticizing ideas, thinking that a person will take it as a personal attack (gotta admit, I am guilty of this too, if I don't know the person well enough to assume they take criticism well).
When it is the fight for the best idea or solution, I don't care how wrong I am, I care about finding the "truth" aka the best solution given the situation. As long as the criticism is directed towards the idea and not the person, I am just as happy, regardless of whether my idea won or not (as long as the idea that won had better arguments for it).
