It seems that over the past couple months or so, I started having and engaging in more political discussions (on account of the presidential election). When you’re in that space, it feels like you need to have an opinion on every little thing. Geopolitics, taxes, financial policy, etc. How important is it to educate myself and ask questions? Do you feel that pressure to have an opinion on everything?
edit: I don’t think this question is about politics, but if it is, I can delete this.
I mean, it’s okay to not have positions on a lot of things. People tend to get upset if the position you’re dithering over is whether they or their loved ones deserve to live or have equal human rights. Most other things, honorable people may differ.
How important is it to educate yourself and ask questions?
Very. Everything is political, and ignorance about politics is a luxury. It allows others to make decisions for you, often ones you wouldn’t choose yourself.
Polite society - “Never, ever discuss politics or religion. Thinking that you can change someone’s mind on either of these subjects is foolish and arrogant and the conversation will always, without fail, end in an argument”
Americans for some fucking reason - “Hold my high fructose corn syrup”
Of course, it’s okay. Being able to say “I don’t know” is a sign of intelligence in itself.
A huge number of people form opinions based on very limited knowledge, but these opinions then become part of their identity, and they feel compelled to defend them tooth and nail. I think the middle ground here is the idea of “strong opinions, loosely held,” meaning you have an opinion, but you understand it’s based on the best knowledge available at the time. You leave room for new information and allow your opinion to evolve. In fact, most opinions probably should be like that. There are very few views I hold that I feel are almost guaranteed not to change.
The Dunning-Kruger effect plays a big role here. When someone gains a moderate amount of knowledge on a subject, they often feel like they have a good understanding of it. But as they keep learning, they realize just how little they actually know. Uninformed people, by contrast, don’t know what they don’t know. These are the ones who write comments on social media pretending they’ve solved complex issues with simplistic solutions like “just do X,” while completely ignoring all the nuance. When you then try to introduce that nuance, they dig their heels in, taking it as a personal attack rather than a critique of their idea. This happens because they didn’t leave room for new information - they locked in their opinion, made it part of their identity, and threw away the key.
So this is interesting… My favorite of the definitions of “opinion” I found is
belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge
Because I was about to say that it’s impossible not to have an opinion, which might not be entirely correct.
In DBT we were told that there are helpful, consequential and inconsequential ehm… evaluations? Assessments? Judgments? I don’t know the exact translation. Anyway, an important thing I realized then was that opinions/values etc are not something you form consciously, they just kinda pop up in your head and change shapes depending on what you learn and experience. You are able to detach from your opinions, look at them from the outside.
edit: so what I ultimately wanted to tell you is that you can do this detachment thing with other people’s opinions as well.
short answer: yes
long answer: opinions are kind of a privilege. if you’re someone working 9 to 5 you probably couldn’t give a shit about anything other than relaxing and winding down from the stress of a work week. if you’re someone who manages to still be involved, congrats. pushing this unto other people imo is not fair. ideally people would work less and have more free time to get situated with how their surroundings are being legislated
I have a hell of a lot of respect for people who are forthright and just say “You know, I don’t have a lot of experience regarding <subject>, so I don’t think I can weigh in on that”
it amazes me how seldom people are brave enough to admit they don’t know something.
Not having an opinion is MUCH better than sticking to an uninformed opinion with stubborn fervor. Nobody can possibly know everything, so it’s perfectly fine to take time out to research something, or decide that it’s not worth your time and forget about it completely.
“I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion about this” is an admirable stance to take.
When it’s a cop-out for not wanting to be politically informed, it’s a crappy place to be. It can sound a lot like “I don’t know and I don’t care”.
I’ve often said that in order to redirect a conversation because I don’t like the opinion of the person I’m talking to and not because I’m actually ignorant about the subject.
This happens at work mostly, and I can’t just nuke that bridge with the person because we have to keep being able to work together. I’d like to tell them off for being ignorantly intolerant, but instead it’s more effective to just take away their enthusiasm for whatever they’re talking about. Do it enough times and they’ll eventually find someone else to bother.
That can backfire and then you get a retarTed Talk about how their viewpoint is the right one.
I just say “Bless your heart.” and walk away. Works best when talking to northerners because they don’t know what that means.
I’m in South Carolina, so that wouldn’t work so well here since everyone already knows what that means. I do agree that not giving them the opening to elaborate is key.
Deciding to ignore something that causes people to suffer because it doesn’t affect you is wrong. Not having a set opinion on how to fix it is perfectly normal. Not everyone can understand the details enough to form an informed opinion. Just don’t decide something isn’t a problem because one group says it’s not without real evidence, especially if they’re the ones who created and/or benefit from the problem.
Yes, not having an option on something is fine. when people push you can always whip out “I don’t know enough about the topic to have an opinion.”
And if you want to fuck with conspiracy wackos you add “So I would just refer to experts on the subject if I wanted to learn about it.”
Also an excellent way to end conversation about a controversial topic when needed.
Yeah, I don’t know about that- that could definitely seem like an invitation to " explain" it to you
I don’t have an opinion about this.
Me neither!
I would say it’s better to not have an opinion than to have an uninformed opinion.
Like a kid who has a strong opinion on a food that they’ve never tried. How can you know you don’t like something if you never tried it? Sure.
You could look at the ingredients and if you don’t like anything that goes in it you can assume that you wouldn’t like the end product, but at least some thought went into at that point.
It depends. Of course it’s fine to have no opinion about, say, which sports team should win the big game, because that doesn’t matter. And even on bigger issues like fiscal policy, it’s okay to just admit you don’t know enough about a complicated subject to have an informed opinion. While I do think it’s important to educate yourself as much as you can, no one can reasonably learn everything about everything in order to have all of the right opinions all of the time.
But some issues are both important and clear cut. Like, if someone says they have “no opinion” on whether LGBTQ people deserve equal rights… no, no I will not accept “no opinion” as an answer here. You don’t need to read mountains of theory to disavow bigotry, and if anyone tries to give an excuse for why they won’t, I’ll consider that complicit.
It’s fine to not have an opinion as long as you aren’t making a decision based on that ignorance
