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Agreed. My skepticism about a claim is proportional to how much the person arguing it wants it to be true.

• marklgr 11y ago
  Quite often, the person doesn't realize he wants it to be true, so this raises the question: don't you have similar motives unbeknownst to you, and are you skeptical about them too?
  • haberman 11y ago
    Yes I am skeptical about my ideas, often excessively and to my detriment! But I don't believe I or anyone else can completely remove this bias, and I think that beyond a certain point it's not healthy or productive to do so. Taken too far, you can find yourself unable to think any thought without arguing against it with twice as many counter-thoughts. It can lead to paralysis where you aren't able to do or think anything for long enough to actually accomplish something. I think we have to accept that sometimes we are, at least temporarily, operating according to ideas we can't fully justify. We have to be willing to be temporarily wrong or misguided.