TL;DR: Strong opinions, weakly held doesn't work because of Anchoring Bias[1]. Obviously if you fall prey to anchoring bias, you're doing the "weakly held" par

TL;DR: Strong opinions, weakly held doesn't work because of Anchoring Bias[1]. Obviously if you fall prey to anchoring bias, you're doing the "weakly held" part wrong, but I think that almost everybody does this wrong, even people who know about anchoring bias and do their best to guard against it. I've known about anchoring bias for maybe a decade, recognized it in my own beliefs, taken steps to attempt to address it (i.e. meditation and reading opposing opinions to my own) and while I'll give myself the credit that maybe I'm a bit better than an average person at changing my own beliefs now, I'm still objectively very bad at it, frequently coming across places where it's clear looking back that I was wrong for years due to anchoring bias. It's much easier, I think, to permeate everything in my own belief system with a fundamental level of doubt, and only form really strong opinions with overwhelming evidence. But even that is only somewhat effective. Anchoring bias is a pretty powerful foe. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)