More generally, “strong opinions weakly held” is often a useful default perspective to adopt [...] Try it at a cocktail party the next time a cont

More generally, “strong opinions weakly held” is often a useful default perspective to adopt [...] Try it at a cocktail party the next time a controversial topic comes up Ah, yes. We've all met this guy at parties. "[Technology X] is the worst thing ever and people who use it are setting the industry back by ten years. Prove me wrong!" Don't be that guy. The guy who's even worse than a regular blowhard: the blowhard that doesn't even necessarily believe what he's saying; he's just trying to stir up debate. The social equivalent of a message board troll, essentially. If you want to incorporate "strong opinions, weakly held" into your own internal decision-making and opinion-forming process, cool. Not a bad way to go. It's also appropriate in many contexts with others - ie spitballing sessions where everybody is tossing out possible solutions to a problem they're tying to solve or hell, maybe a drinking session with friends where you're all three or four drinks deep and shooting the shit, being silly. But at "cocktail parties" or other casual social situations like hallway or lunch table conversations? Yeeesh. Don't be that person, where you obnoxiously dump your "strong opinions" onto others. A lot of people don't enjoy debate for debate's sake. (I actually tend to enjoy it - but many do not.)