opinion

When was the last time you changed your mind?

Ooi Kok Hin

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”, said Aristotle.

In an age of highly politicised debates and partisan society, when was the last time that you:

• allow for the possibility that you might be wrong?
• overreacted to an unverified news, a quote taken out of context, or an issue blown out of proportion?
• misconstrued someone’s argument just to make yours stronger and his/hers look weaker?

Even the smartest folks in the society – brilliant doctors, professors, PhD holders, lawyers, engineers, businessmen – are prone to go funny in the head when they talk politics.

This is particularly true when we talk about things which are close to our interests and ideologies. Our emotions, and ego, suspend all the usual cautious, thoughtful procedures and rational apparatus through which we usually arrive at a decision in our professional field.

This reminds me of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Politics is the mind killer” series of essays.

In particular, the “Fable of Science and Politics” essay perfectly illustrates why so many of us are so stubborn with our opinions and continue to argue over a minor or non-issue dispute.
 
Proponents of a certain view tend to demonise the other side and caricature their arguments, which will then be presented to the public as if it is a choice between good and evil.

But, like Yudkowsky said, “To argue against an idea honestly, you should argue against the best arguments of the strongest advocates.

Arguing against weaker advocates proves nothing, because even the strongest idea will attract weak advocates.”

Liberalism and secularism have naive defenders, so are conservatism and Islamism. If you are a liberal, you may come across this statement in your circle: “Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”

If you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, think that this statement (true or otherwise), is completely irrelevant as a critique of conservatism, then you are not thinking rationally about politics.

When you participate in a debate or discussion, you should not think and argue one-sidedly. The skill of a good debater is to know the issue so thoroughly that you can anticipate and value your opponent’s arguments inside out.

I had a friend who told me that he has changed his political affiliation five times already. I also have friends who used to be a “jemaah” and now openly liberal and secular.

Instead of thinking these people, all in their 20s, as unprincipled and inconsistent, I actually think this is precisely the process that one has to go through to gain political maturation.

I mean, if you had already firmly decided on one ideology (likely to be the first ideology you are exposed to), and stick with it for the rest of your life, then you probably embraced your worldview without exploring and cross-referencing it with other worldviews.

No where is this clearer than the subject of religion of course, where one often shrugs off the necessity to learn about other religions, evolutionary theory, and rational agnotism/atheism because “my religion is perfect already”.

I once met a prominent libertarian. He has been known to be quite pro-capitalism and would resist state intervention and regulation in many things. But one surprising thing is that he admitted to have never read Marx, yet he is very against it.

Another figure would ridicule Marxist and socialist ideas on his social media, but the very thing he shared would often tell that he has never read the vast and rich literature.

We see this everywhere. With certain leftists, they would insinuate that everyone else is not doing enough to fight capitalism and neoliberalism except themselves. They would throw big labels and jargons, but offer no detailed, substantiated, or at least a strong theoretical critique or/and alternative.

And that is what I’m afraid is missing from today’s debates. The ability and willingness to reach out to understand the other side (there are often more than two sides of an issue though), read and understand the issue thoroughly, and formulate an appropriate response.

Seculars never make the effort to understand the Islamists, the conservatives are denouncing the liberals and plural society as if they are some kind of diseases, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement was approved in Parliament on a strictly bloc-voting basis.

It is worrying that party-line voting is prevalent in major policy debates.

Marx made the effort to read and understand Smith, Ricardo, Proudhon, and Hegel even though he was to turn some of their theories upside down (and engaged in quite a bitter rivalry with one).

Ludwig Von Mises, the Austrian School economist (Mises Institute was named after him), wrote a 600-page book on socialism, offering an economic and sociological critique on the subject.

Point is, there is a lot to be learned from your (worthy) opponent. That in turn helps you to formulate a more comprehensive, fair, and substantive argument rather than speaking from thin airs.

Your opponent then must respond to valid and sound critique rather than ignoring it or diverting to other issues like name-calling (This would reflect more on their lowly character than yours).

The next time you caught someone or yourself bashing and demonising the other side, ask whether you or the person have read up about the issue, recite the arguments pro and against, and look up the reading materials.

So when was the last occasion you allow for the possibility that you might be wrong?

Here’s mine. I was wrong to assume that a quote widely shared on social media and quotation pages are true. The quote by Aristotle on the top of this article? Well, it ain’t exactly said by Aristotle in spite of what Goodreads and so many other pages tell us.

It is not to be found in any of Aristotle’s surviving books, and the closest passage that mirrors the quote is this one from Nichomachean Ethics:

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”

I can still argue that it is quite similar in some ways or that it doesn’t matter that we paraphrase him. But are these two quotes saying the same thing? No. And I was wrong to share and post the quote without verifying the source and its authority.

Of late, there has been too many rhetorics. Perhaps we should factcheck ourselves and only critique something which we understand and have read substantively about. – January 30, 2016.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.