system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is Dialectical Materialism?
gpt
A dialectic is an interaction between two things, sometimes opposites. Materialism is a method of reasoning that primarily believes objective reality exists without any observation, that the person observing doesn't create the object they view. One consequence is that a materialist has to seek the truth as a thing outside themselves rather than trusting that their subjective view of reality creates the truth. Dialectical materialism is a way to parse reality through looking at new information in relation to what you already knew, two sides of the dialectic both related to observing objective reality. The usual formula is hypothesis plus antithesis equals synthesis, but its less formal than that in practice. A common example of dialectical materialism in action is when a scientific hypothesis is tested, the new data proves part of the old wrong and when they are synthesized the new hypothesis becomes the accepted scientific truth.