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LEARNING TO ARGUE

Confirmation bias is what we do when we search for information that supports our position.

We have all been guilty of this type of thinking from time to time. And what makes it even harder is the abundance of bad information, especially on the Internet which is where, let's face it, we do most of our arguing. In this venue, in today's charged political climate, it is a full time job fact checking other people’s claims. It has come to the point where we actually have to fact check the fact checkers.

Scientists look for evidence that will prove their hypothesis wrong. This is one reason why science, with all its flaws, remains the best modality available for learning stuff.

But I am not a scientist, I barely made it out of high school and I dropped out of college.

I am a middle class, blue-collar worker, average in every respect. In my defense, I have read a lot. And not just crackpot books with weird political agendas. I’ve read books, by Shermer, Sagan, and Asimov, to name a few, that are meant to teach one how to think critically.

Granted, even at sixty-two, I am a work in progress, but at least I have recognized within me the fallacy of confirmation bias. And along with that is the need to be right at all costs. That is something I am guilty of for I always wish to be right. I want to be the smart one, to blow the opposition out of the water with my cool intellect, leave them in wonderment and smarting from my deft turn of a phrase and stinging wit.

In order to rid myself of the confirmation bias and its pedantic sidekick, I began posting contradictory information about a specific subject. I did this on my Facebook account. I stated a position, but then posted sites in opposition to my stated position. I was playing devil's advocate with myself and inviting others to join in.

My thinking was to share what I had uncovered and see if anyone else came up with new or better information that would either confirm the position I had adopted or debunk it. I thought the more people doing research, the more diversified the arguments and the Socratic approach would soon uncover the truth.

Of course, I ran into another fallacy, the either/or logical fallacy. I found that the problem is more nuanced than I thought. Oddly, I found this to be the case in almost everything I was reading and on a variety of subjects. The world, it seems, is not as neat and ordered or as simple as I had thought.

It didn't work. Maybe Facebook is not the right venue. People just got pissed off or totally missed the point I was trying to make. There was very little insight gained and the post fizzled.

In any case, I am learning to look up evidence that is oppositional to my position. When in dialogue with someone, I refrain (well, I try to refrain) from ad hominem attacks and sarcastic, insulting language. And most importantly, I ready myself to be proved wrong and to accept such a conclusion with grace and humility.

What I learned by adopting this way of thinking is that I get more from the dialogue than when I just argued my point with tried and true rhetoric and facts that supported my position. I have learned to be  open to divergent points of view and to listen more effectively to opposing argument.





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