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Indeed. Very rarely does an argument change someone's opinion. Smarter people have their views changed by experience. The less smart cling to their beliefs desp
by osullivj 9y ago
Indeed. Very rarely does an argument change someone's opinion. Smarter people have their views changed by experience. The less smart cling to their beliefs despite experience. Hence the aphorism "consistency is the virtue of a narrow mind." For myself, I've found that a further optimization in terms of mental bandwidth is to avoid even forming a view on matters that I don't really care about. If one doesn't have a view or position on a matter, then there's no temptation to be drawn into time wasting debate.
- pasabagi 9y ago> further optimization in terms of mental bandwidth is to avoid even forming a view on matters I sympathise with the idea - but I think the problem is, a lot of the time opinions are a predicament, not a choice. Without consciously taking a position on a topic, you're often implicitly accepting various components of it - its logical dependencies, its framing of the problem, and so on. My gut feeling is that people don't all have opinions ('everyone's a critic') because of widespread foolishness, but rather it's a basic characteristic and consequence of thought - just like you have to make assumptions to make a proof.