Ramble

Everyone has opinions, but not everyone thinks very deeply about what kinds of opinions they hold. I strive to uphold the principle of strong opinions, weakly held while it sometimes seems that most of the rest of the population believes in strong opinions, strongly held or conversely, weak opinions, weakly held.

Weak opinions lead nowhere. The holder is unmotivated to develop strong supporting arguments and therefore the soundness of such opinions are suspect. You can’t learn much from someone with such opinions. I find people who hold very many weak opinions to be rather apathetic and irritating. I actually don’t encounter too many of these types of people. Maybe I am just lucky?

However, strong opinions that are held dogmatically are just about as useless as weak opinions. Such opinions have ossified and are immune to reason or counter-evidence. People holding very many such opinions can be merely annoying or occasionally very destructive if they have power to implement their views and their views turn out to be wrong. I regularly encounter people holding such opinions. These types of people are epitomized by the guests and hosts of the Sunday morning talk shows.

Strong opinions that are weakly held are what should be sought. They inspire one to develop strong arguments that are open to modification or even falsification as new evidence dictates. In order to develop and continusouly test such opinions, one needs to be well informed about the subject matter, as well as know how to properly interpret and reason about relevant data.

Continuously testing your opinions is hard work and it must be done with discipline, everyday, if one is to avoid slipping into dogmatism. Unfortunately, I don’t think our educational system does a good job of teaching people how to do this or how to even recognize the difference between a well supported opinion and a superficial one. That’s why, to this day, I consider Pete Amato’s Critical Reasoning course to be the most important course of my undergraduate college career and one that I always implore new students to take seriously.

Striving for strong opinions, weakly held will make you a better thinker. Question everything, seek empirical evidence to resolve disputes, and be your own harshest critic. Once the principle is internalized, you begin to see the world differently and it can be a revelatory experience. Of course, that’s just my opinion.