Holding Opposing Ideas

Very few issues worthy of debate are black and white. That’s why we need to grapple with the gray areas of life, of which there are many. It’s always tempting to reduce issues to binary choices between right and wrong, good and evil, beneficial and destructive. But it’s ultimately self-defeating; binary thinking discourages complex reasoning while ... See more

Absolutist thinking drives polarisation and entrenches us in binaries. A more nuanced, flexible approach to ideas – and each other – might serve us all better

The greatest challenge, of course, is the perennial challenge of the human mind — how to integrate seemingly contradictory needs or ideas in such a way that they coexist harmoniously, perhaps even magnify each other, rather than cancel each other out.

Open-minded people can take in the thoughts of others without losing their ability to think well—they can hold two or more conflicting concepts in their mind and go back and forth between them to assess their relative merits.

Doing the work required to hold an opinion means you can argue against yourself better than others can. Only then can you say, “I can hold this view because I can’t find anyone else who can argue better against my view.”
The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things. You ha... See more

The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it.