One Thought

Being wrong sucks.  If given the choice, you’d rather hold right¹ views than wrong ones.  Right?  

You hold views that are wrong.  So do I.  The question is: will we discover they are wrong?  And when we do, will we turn them right?

I’m not advocating particular views in this article.  Instead I’m suggesting techniques for ferreting out wrong views and replacing them with right ones.  I’m not a hypocrite: some of these techniques could be bogus.  I’ll add, remove, and update them as I’m convinced is necessary.  Thoughts are welcome.

How to be right:

1. Don’t self-identify with your views.  Your views may change.  Indeed they should if you hear an argument that’s stronger than your own.  Don’t become your views.

   If you call yourself a libertarian, any attack on libertarianism becomes an attack on you.  Attacks trigger a defensive response, which makes it harder to see things clearly.  It’s difficult enough to change your views already; don’t make it even harder by self-identifying with them.  If you become convinced that libertarianism isn’t ideal, you haven’t become a different person; you’ve just heard a better argument.  Your current views are not who you are.

2. Take the middle road.  It’s unlikely that one side of an argument has no valid points.  Recognize valid points when you see them, and incorporate them into your own viewpoint.  Extreme positions are rarely right.  Just because you take one side of an argument doesn’t mean you must believe that everything your side says is right and everything the other side says is wrong.

3. Be concerned with seeing things as they are.  If you’re not consciously making the effort to see things as they are–and to accept them when they are different from how you want them to be–you’re probably wrong more than you know.  You can’t project preconceived ideas or opinions onto the world and expect it to change to fit them.

   Train yourself to accept things as they are.  If you can’t accept reality, you’ll live in denial: half of you will think you’re right, and half will know you’re wrong.  If you see adequate evidence for a point of view, accept it.  Don’t try to explain away things you don’t like.  If you notice yourself wanting things to be a certain way, be suspicious of arguments you come up with in support of that view.  (Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to change things; in fact, once you’ve accepted that they are a particular way, you’re in a great position to change them.)

4. Understand your perspective.  Everyone is not just like you.  Some are a different sex, some are a different race, and some grew up in a different country, some have different interests, and so on.  Your views have been shaped by who you are, and it’s not necessarily reasonable to expect those coming from different perspectives to hold them as well.  Understand your perspective and how it colors your viewpoint.  Try to look at the world from others’ perspectives.

5. Talk to intelligent, informed people.  ”Intelligent” does not mean “agrees with you”!  In fact, if you can find intelligent and informed people who disagree with you, that’s all the better.  Talk to people who will challenge you.  If you’re talking only to unintelligent and ignorant people, you’re likely succeeding only in reinforcing your present views.  Curious people are best.  Look for people who’ve examined their views carefully.

6. Play devil’s advocate with yourself.  Why wait for someone else to disagree with you?  Anticipate counter-arguments, and imagine how you would respond to them.  Make sure to present these counter-arguments as strongly as possible.  If you’re good, you may force yourself to change your views without ever talking to anyone else.

7. Read.  The more points of view you’re exposed to, the less likely you are to adopt wrong ones.  Make sure you expose yourself to all points of view, not just ones you agree with.  Read to understand the background information relevant to your views.

8. Write.  Writing forces you to think carefully about your views.  Holes in your knowledge and flaws in your argument will reveal themselves.  You’ll understand issues much better after you’ve written about them.  You don’t have to publish your writing if you don’t want to–you could burn it as soon as you finish and still reap many of the benefits.

9. Be aware of the cognitive biases.  There’s a wealth of psychology literature on cognitive biases, which are ways people tend to misperceive reality.  If you understand the known biases, you don’t have to re-discover them through your own experience.  They include:

   • Confirmation bias: the tendency to search for and interpret new information in a way that supports your preconceptions (and to avoid information and interpretations that contradict them).
   • Self-serving bias: the tendency to take credit for your successes and deny responsibility for your failures.
   • Hindsight bias: the tendency to see past events as having been more predictable than they actually were.

Footnotes:

1. All my uses of the word “right” in this article could be changed to “less wrong.”  I’m not claiming that in all matters there is a right answer.  It is always the case, however, that some answers are less wrong than others.