College encourages the formation of hard opinions on most topics. This is true both in classes and in the college social life.
The idea behind this encouragement is to get students to read into issues in order to find a conclusion they are confident beyond any doubt is correct.
Students encourage one another to form opinions like these because they have the characteristic confidence and assuredness that’s so heavily associated with youth.
However, there is information out of our reach, and there are questions that are beyond the faculties of an undergraduate in college.
Ironically, I’m using this opinion piece to express my firmest conviction — never trust your own convictions.
I know that this is contradictory, but hear me out.
On many debatable topics, like the nature of other minds, ethics, morality, etc., there’s generally either no single right answer or no discernible right answer.
These topics make up a large percentage of discussions we have in class.
The nature of these topics isn’t simple, and answers get messy easily.
That’s why they’re contested issues.
It’s fine to take a side in one of these issues for the sake of contributing to the scope of the discussion or to try to reach better solutions through argument, but to begin allowing these tendencies to cement in the mind is to allow oneself to mentally slacken.
Let me explain. Once a person has come to a conclusion on a problem, that problem will usually be labelled as “solved” for that individual.
This works really well with fundamental observable facts.
It’s an intrinsic part of the natural sciences and mathematics, which are my desired area of study.
It does not work, however, with matters that are non-deterministic — such as those that do not have a single right or discernible answer, like the nature of other minds, ethics or morality.
Do those things sound familiar? They should.
Since those things have no clear answer, we need to take the nature of our convictions into account when forming our opinions.
When it comes to judgment calls like this, once you reach a point at which you can no longer hear arguments from the other side of an issue for how loud you’re jabbering about your own side’s talking points, you’ve gone too far.
Don’t get me wrong: my opinion is not that people shouldn’t have opinions.
In fact, I believe quite the opposite.
Opinions are very important for advancing discussion and knowledge of practical, relevant topics.
The only point I hope to make here is that opinions shouldn’t be allowed to stagnate and crystallize, or become the kind of “hard” opinions that are so encouraged by the setting in which we live.
We have to allow our opinions to change as our information does.
A warning, I suppose you could say, against assuredness in excess.
jacob.worrell@gmail.com
