Great West Wing clip! One of my favorites too!

If we concur with Nicholas’ statements, and I believe we do, then it follows that when you agree with someone you’re just not very likely to view their opinion as suspect! So, really, you’re only likely gonna regard someone else’s opinion as suspect when you disagree with them.

As for “speaking in absolutes” being rooted in someone’s refusal to challenge their own opinions before coming to a conclusion, I am not sure we can draw that conclusion. How do you know that they haven’t already done that soul searching, had those discussions, etc.? And that path is exactly what has led them to their opinion?

Again, I come back to the basis that the validity of someone’s opinion has nothing to do with how strongly they feel it or how extreme it may seem relative to our own. We should not let ourselves fall into the trap of confusing our perception of someone’s objectivity or their apparent fairness or willingness to listen to our ideas with whether they are more right or wrong about a particular issue.

Based on your statement about it all having to do with how someone arrives at their conclusion, I really think we’re thinking along the same lines.

Witness this clip from NBC’s The West Wing (before they dispatched with Aaron Sorkin and the whole thing totally sucked — oh wait … is that a /strong opinion/ I exude? *grin*) Here, CJ and Josh learn about alternative map projections. They go in with one perspective and come out with perhaps a more enlightened view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM

Later!

“Speaking in absolutes” to me has less to do with strong opinions than a refusal to challenge your own opinions before coming to conclusion.

When I read that someone’s opinion is immediately suspect because you perceive them to have an extreme bias, then I do feel that, to some degree, you are unreasonably discounting their opinion. Maybe not in totality, but the fact is that you’re allowing their bias to skew your perception. Because there is an implicit notion that you will view a dissenting opinion with more suspicion than a congruent one (duh!), your skew will always be away from them and toward your own beliefs…. It then naturally follows that the more strongly someone believes something that you disagree with, the more they will simply reinforce your beliefs in your own mind.

If you boil down what I was trying say this morning, it is this: the validity of someone’s opinion really doesn’t have much to do with how “sure” they are about it. Much more relevant and useful for reaching an common understanding is /how/ they came to that opinion.

What the quoted author said is quite true in every respect. The typical response is to seek reinforcement for our beliefs from our friends, or subject matter experts, or church groups, or political talk shows, or finding a news channel that doesn’t challenge our own perceptions. We do this because doing the right thing is hard. Seeking the correct answer in the face of adversity — especially when it comes from within — is hard.

The middle rules politically because it acknowledges that trade-offs exists, that sometimes some of our goals can be in conflict with others, and that good ideas can be found at both ends of the spectrum.