3 ms·
It's weird to me that people even seek to have opinions in the first place. That always seemed like the wrong way to view the world from the perspective of an o
by kypro 3y ago
It's weird to me that people even seek to have opinions in the first place. That always seemed like the wrong way to view the world from the perspective of an observer with incomplete data.
I mean take a topic like global warming... It might be true or false in reality, but from our perspectives as subjective observers with incomplete data we can only ever say things about global warming with degrees of confidence. Therefore I tend to think of myself as an ~80% believer in global warming and a ~20% disbeliever – evidence seems to strongly weight on the side of global warming being a real phenomena, but it's certainly not inconceivable to me that our data may be incomplete.
Obviously where binary decisions need to be made I will act as if I believe global warming is real, but the point is I genuinely don't know and to say I believe in global warming as if it's rational to have a binary opinion on such things would be utterly absurd.
Another upside of thinking like this is that I genuinely don't seek to have opinions on anything. I like to think of my "opinions" more as superpositions of opinions which only manifest as binaries temporarily in situations where I need to act on my beliefs as if they're binaries.
I also like to remind myself that my own beliefs are simply the net of all opinions held by others with my own weightings – like a softmax output or something. Therefore I hold all political positions and all ideologies to some degree. For example, I consider myself as being both someone who supports Brexit and someone who doesn't and I think this makes me more open and understanding when it comes to controversial opinions. At least I seem to find it very easy to incorporate new positions or data without the typical mental blockers because something is labeled a "x" or "y" talking point. If someone makes a good point which I hadn't considered before I'll just be like, "oh that's interesting" and then it's part of my beliefs automatically. That wouldn't necessarily mean that the ideology that motivated that point would manifest when I'm forced to make binary decisions, and in this way I can easily view the majority of Brexit talking points as truthy without actually voting Brexit.
On the negatives people have said I'm schizophrenic with my beliefs because I'm fine with manifesting different binary opinions from week to week. But I think I'd argue it's probably more rational to do that when operating with a low level of certainty. I mean what's the alternative? Having a binary opinion the pros and cons of something as nuanced as freedom vs security? That would be equally absurd. If you force me to take to have a binary opinion it will be inconsistent.