Opposing Views


Charlie Munger once talked about the work one should put in before forming an opinion:
“Ask yourself what are the arguments on the other side. It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents. This is a great mental discipline.”
That is very good advice indeed.

Sadly, it is also very hard to follow. That is probably why most people with a strong opinion rarely know of any merits in the opposing view. And so they take to name calling and like to think of themselves as morally superior.

No, that doesn’t just apply to politicians and fanatics. It applies to most people we know, probably (shudder) even ourselves. Sure, the degrees may be vastly different across groups or individuals, but very few people take the actual effort of going as far as Munger advised.

Or if they do, they just pick the worst possible motive they can think of for the opposing view (bigot, racist, religious fanatic, greedy, selfish) and stop there. People do that even though deep down they know that things are never that simple. As André Gide said:
“The colour of truth is grey.”

Heard of the Ideological Turing Test?
“The Ideological Turing Test is a concept invented by American economist Bryan Caplan to test whether a political or ideological partisan correctly understands the arguments of his or her intellectual adversaries: the partisan is invited to answer questions or write an essay posing as his opposite number. If neutral judges cannot tell the difference between the partisan’s answers and the answers of the opposite number, the candidate is judged to correctly understand the opposing side.”
A very tough ask indeed.

Even if you did all that work, Munger points out that what’s needed next is extremely hard:
“The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things.”

As if doing that analysis wasn’t hard enough, acting on that analysis is even harder…

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarMay 16, 2018 at 5:19 PM

    Heard of the Ideological Turing Test? asks the blog. Indeed I hadn't until now. Certainly that proposal is brilliant.

    Actually, it is extremely difficult for anyone to express almost anything without the personal leanings not showing. Even in literature, where the litterateur is expected to portray "life as it is seen" (after stepping out of oneself), somewhere some time the author will come in the way and put across only, "life as I saw it!". So, greatly appreciate the approach taken for the Ideological Turing Test as a master-stroke idea for testing. Bryan Caplan seems to know the meaning of objectivity in humans, where paradigm decides everything beforehand.
    ===
    Now some personal take of mine on objective people:

    I never stopped marveling Shakespeare, who for me is outstanding as far as the method of narrating by keeping on transforming himself into the character who expresses something - he can do it every time, everywhere in his plays! Very difficult to detect Shakespeare's leanings - he is a 'chameleon' whose color at any time is the character he chooses to present. A true 'gray' person indeed! :-) Who can know Shakespeare's true color? Amazing.

    In sciences (mathematics and physics I am fully aware; other sciences too are the same, seen from my limited knowledge in the detail of their methodology) objectivity is a compulsion maintained by the framework of the science establishment, even though the establishment itself can have flaws, due to personalities who are part of the establishment, both formal and social (within the science domain). Looks strange?

    Among scientists, my admiration is more for Einstein's objectivity on the one side and his courage of conviction about, what one may call, 'the principle/foundation of Western sciences themselves', on the other. Many people imagined that Einstein lacked objectivity because he fought relentlessly the 'truth' of quantum mechanics 'which was obvious' to the physicists. Imagine, quantum mechanics was as much Einstein's baby as Bohr's and others, who meticulously developed it to full form. Many people who gave up on Einstein, for, they did not understand what he was up against, in clear terms. They knew science, but chose to ignore that the 'founding methods of sciences' got shaken in a strange way by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Only those who understand that Einstein stood above physics itself will understand that his objectivity did not falter. Leaning on Ideology and Standing by Fundamentals/ foundation-principles are two different things and should not be mixed up; else, right understanding will falter; and then, we will label Einstein subjectively!

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