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, ...