&gt; Should people be striving to remove friction in discourse in the first place? I mean, if something hurts to hear, surely that should sound the alarm that it&#x27;s worth confronting, rather than running away from, right?<p>Not necessarily. I personally prefer Scott Alexander&#x27;s criteria for commentary at SlateStarCodex (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;</a>). A comment should be two of: True, kind, necessary.<p>Plenty of things cause near-visible <i>sparks</i> when you put them in discourse, and most of them are mean, pedantic, or just not true. You&#x27;re interested in the set of comments which are true and necessary, this is a tiny subset of the comments which cause friction.