Statements like &quot;X is a terrible person&quot; don&#x27;t come from a concern for the truth, they come from our desire to see the people we identify against as evil. Whatever truth is, the ability to suspend this motive in oneself is sine qua non for it.<p>&gt; <i>I find the requirement of &quot;civility&quot; over &quot;truth&quot; to be rather off-putting.</i><p>That would of course be absurd, and there&#x27;s no such requirement.<p>People regularly conflate <i>judgment made from strong feeling</i> with <i>truth</i>, and so they blast out the former with a righteous sense of legitimacy. Those with the opposite judgment feel equally so entitled. This dynamic is destructive, both of civil discourse and of the search for truth, so we needn&#x27;t choose between the two.