These days I try to actively confuse myself as to what positions I hold in the aim to be more objective with my reasoning. As best I can I try to block out thin

These days I try to actively confuse myself as to what positions I hold in the aim to be more objective with my reasoning. As best I can I try to block out thinking in terms of labels completely. When I was younger I cared a lot about having very clear, well defined opinions. I adopted labels to describe my positions and would wear these labels with pride as I believed them to be correct and well-reasoned. Eg, I am a liberal. I am pro-choice. I am anti-war. But truth was I wasn't 100% liberal, pro-choice, or anti-war. There were circumstances where I could hold more nuanced opinions depending on the context. But because I adopted these labels I was always really reluctant to acknowledge when nuances existed. This was especially true the more gray the right answer was. For example, a lot of people who are anti-war believe the US was right to join the fight against the Nazis. But what about the American civil war? What about supporting Ukraine against Russia. Are these justified positions too? Suddenly it's difficult to claim to be anti-war while also be a supporter of many major conflicts. How can someone who claims to be anti-war be in favour of so many wars? You know rationally you can't be anti-war and also pro-war when it suites you so you might be tempted to try to rationalise why actually the American civil war shouldn't have been fought or why Ukraine should just let Russia win to preserve peace. Equally assigning labels to others is also bad. What if you were arguing with someone you consider a racist and they make a good point? No matter how correct they are to acknowledge that point is difficult because suddenly that risks agreeing with a racist. I'm from the UK and I've seen this with the EDL here. While a lot of their opinions are awful, they also occasionally can make good points about issues like grooming gangs and Islamic extremism here in the UK. The problem as no one wanted to agree with them about anything so Islamic extremism and grooming gangs got labelled a far-right conspiracy. I suppose a more recent example of this was with Covid. In 2021 agree with any argument against mass government mandated vaccination programs was often considered being anti-vax. My head is far more muddled these days. I believe I'm more objective and flexible in my thinking though. I'm saying this because while being happy to lose a debate and change your mind is great, no one goes into a debate to lose - especially not to someone you view as an ideological enemy in some form. As soon as you assign labels to yourself and think in terms of "winning" and "losing" it's very difficult to think rationally about anything.