Edit on April 20, 2021. A day earlier, I posted the comment below to the article Why Writers Should Write to Make People Think by Tessa Schlesinger. Several hours later, I received a notification that Tessa responded, but I found out that she blocked me when following the link. Now the comment below is not visible to the readers of her article. I believe it should be publicly known.

As always, I agree with Tessa in general.

Before listing a few details on which we disagree, let me share my personal experience from my formative years back in then socialistic Poland. We were able to talk with people we disagreed with in principle. Interested in socialism, I never could see it working and ended up as its vivid opponent. My uncle was a wholehearted socialist, but we became close friends by exploring our disagreement. I had several relationships like that.

Unfortunately, my writing would not make Tessa think because she equals my critique of socialism to the reasoning of flat Earthers or conspiracy theorists. As such not worth consideration.

Also, many reject my critique of the climate change mantra without consideration of my arguments: https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/science-and-money-in-the-climate-change-debate-f94e3c7130ac.

Writers can make people think when they engage in polemics with writers they do not agree with. In polemics, readers can consider opposing arguments next to each other, which makes them think.

For this reason, I joined Jazmin Cortes in launching the Virtual Agora publication on Medium, https://virtualagora.us/. We are interested in articles presenting the author's point of view, but we prefer that it is a polemic with other writers. Tessa rejected my invitation. So far, we have a few weak promises from other writers. We know that the art of writing polemic is forgotten. We will patiently work on its rebound. All writers are welcome.