The Problem With Opposing Viewpoints
Apr. 26th, 2025 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unspeakablehorrorI think that the belief that opposing viewpoints are necessarily more likely to cause people to think more deeply about their positions is very misguided. What causes people to think more deeply about their positions is being exposed to arguments or complexities they haven't fully thought of before. Opposing viewpoints can be (and often are) one or even all parties strawmanning the other. Opposing viewpoints can be the same 101 level arguments you've heard a million times already. And they can be vastly unequal in quality or seriousness. Devoting oneself equally to examining a blatantly contradictory or false argument as one does a logically or factually rigorous one is to construct a false equivalence of merit, to allow "but we just can't possibly know" or "everyone is equally at fault" to justify apathy and inaction.
What I think is too often overlooked is the effort to better justify one's own position. Because even when we are correct, correctness is not enough. It is important to understand our own position and understand the world around us well enough to know what we should do, not just what we should believe. It can be all too easy to convince ourselves that we have nothing left we need learn about our own politics, either to refute it or to fully embrace it.
But there is always more to learn. And also, even when we do want to better understand political positions we don't hold, understanding them through the lens of people holding those positions actually discussing their details outside of an explicit debate or overt attempt to portray opposing viewpoints can be a lot more valuable. Also, opposing viewpoints approaches tend to set up false dichotomies, vastly oversimplifying the diversity of beliefs people can hold.
Anyway, I think the main idea here is that the opposing viewpoints structure is just not a good way to better understand beliefs, whether they're your own or others.
What I think is too often overlooked is the effort to better justify one's own position. Because even when we are correct, correctness is not enough. It is important to understand our own position and understand the world around us well enough to know what we should do, not just what we should believe. It can be all too easy to convince ourselves that we have nothing left we need learn about our own politics, either to refute it or to fully embrace it.
But there is always more to learn. And also, even when we do want to better understand political positions we don't hold, understanding them through the lens of people holding those positions actually discussing their details outside of an explicit debate or overt attempt to portray opposing viewpoints can be a lot more valuable. Also, opposing viewpoints approaches tend to set up false dichotomies, vastly oversimplifying the diversity of beliefs people can hold.
Anyway, I think the main idea here is that the opposing viewpoints structure is just not a good way to better understand beliefs, whether they're your own or others.