BDZ NEWS | PERSPECTIVE Maybe the Person You Disagree with Isn't an Idiot
We have become remarkably comfortable assuming that people who reach different conclusions must be ignorant, brainwashed or morally defective. The harder possibility is that intelligent, decent people can look at the same world and genuinely see it differently.
Here's an experiment.
Think about an issue you care deeply about.
Not whether pineapple belongs on pizza.
Something important.
Politics. Religion. Parenting. Marriage. Education. Immigration. Money. Guns. Abortion. Gender roles. Climate policy. Policing. Taxes.
Something where you have an opinion strong enough that hearing the opposite position makes something inside you tighten.
Now imagine someone who believes the exact opposite.
What kind of person did you picture?
Be honest.
Was the person intelligent?
Kind?
Responsible?
A good parent?
Someone who loves their family?
Someone who works hard?
Someone who gives to charity?
Someone you'd trust with your children?
Or did your brain immediately create an asshole?
That's worth thinking about.
Because somewhere along the way, many of us stopped believing people could simply be wrong.
Now they have to be stupid too.
Disagreement Feels Better When the Other Person Is an Idiot
Calling someone stupid solves an uncomfortable problem.
If the other person is stupid, you don't have to seriously consider their argument.
If they're brainwashed, you don't have to understand why they believe what they believe.
If they're evil, listening becomes unnecessary.
You've already won.
At least in your own head.
The problem is that millions of people who disagree with you aren't idiots.
Statistically, that would be an extraordinary coincidence.
Some are probably uninformed.
Some undoubtedly believe things that are false.
Some haven't thought very deeply about the issue.
But here's the uncomfortable part:
That description also applies to people who agree with you.
Every political movement has poorly informed supporters.
Every religion has people who barely understand its teachings.
Every ideology has people repeating arguments they heard somewhere else.
Every side has hypocrites.
Every side has extremists.
Every side has people confidently discussing subjects they haven't spent ten minutes seriously researching.
Your side doesn't receive an exemption.
Neither does mine.
Smart People Disagree About Important Things
We often behave as if intelligence should naturally lead everyone to the same conclusions.
It doesn't.
Highly educated economists disagree about economic policy.
Doctors disagree about medical practices.
Teachers disagree about education.
Scientists debate interpretations of evidence within their fields.
Historians disagree about the meaning and importance of events.
Judges interpret laws differently.
Parents who love their children equally can reach completely different conclusions about how those children should be raised.
Why?
Because intelligence isn't the only ingredient in a belief.
People bring different experiences.
Different priorities.
Different values.
Different information.
Different assumptions.
Different risks they're willing to accept.
Two people can agree completely on the facts and still disagree about what should be done.
That's not necessarily ignorance.
Sometimes it's a difference in values.
Facts and Values Aren't the Same Thing
Suppose two people agree that a proposed policy would save money but reduce access to a particular service.
They don't disagree about the numbers.
One person prioritizes reducing government spending.
The other prioritizes preserving access.
Now what?
You can't fact-check your way out of that disagreement.
They're assigning different importance to competing outcomes.
Many arguments work this way.
Security versus privacy.
Economic growth versus environmental protection.
Individual freedom versus collective responsibility.
Tradition versus change.
Efficiency versus fairness.
Punishment versus rehabilitation.
These aren't always questions with mathematically correct answers.
Facts can tell us what is happening.
Evidence can help us understand likely consequences.
But values influence which consequences we're willing to accept.
Recognizing that distinction can dramatically improve a conversation.
Your Experiences Are Quietly Sitting at the Table
Imagine two people discussing crime.
One grew up in a neighborhood where violent crime was common.
The other had repeated negative experiences with aggressive policing.
Both bring something real to the conversation.
Their experiences don't automatically prove a national policy position.
But those experiences influence what each person notices.
One may think first about safety.
The other may think first about government power.
Now imagine they begin arguing online without knowing anything about one another.
One thinks:
"You don't care about victims."
The other thinks:
"You don't care about abuse."
Both may be wrong about the other person.
They're responding to different fears.
This happens constantly.
We argue with conclusions while knowing almost nothing about the experiences that produced them.
Social Media Doesn't Introduce You to the Average Person
Your phone has another trick.
It repeatedly introduces you to the worst representatives of positions you dislike.
The outrageous clip.
The ridiculous sign.
The offensive comment.
The person who clearly has no idea what they're talking about.
Then we make an enormous intellectual mistake.
We assume that person represents everybody.
Research has found that people can misperceive the beliefs of political opponents. A 2022 study published in PNAS Nexus, for example, found that Democrats and Republicans substantially overestimated how much members of the other party supported actions that undermine basic democratic principles or encourage partisan violence. Providing accurate information about the other party's views reduced those misperceptions in the experiments.
That doesn't mean political divisions are imaginary.
They aren't.
It means our perception of the people on the other side can sometimes be more extreme than the people themselves.
That's a dangerous gap.
Because it's much easier to hate a caricature than a complicated human being.
Certainty Feels Good
There's something incredibly satisfying about being certain.
No hesitation.
No nuance.
No uncomfortable questions.
You're right.
They're wrong.
Done.
Unfortunately, reality rarely cooperates.
Psychologists have studied confirmation bias for decades: people tend to seek, interpret and remember information in ways that reinforce existing beliefs.
And the internet gives confirmation bias a virtually unlimited buffet.
Whatever you believe, you can find someone online telling you you're correct.
You can find an article.
A video.
A podcast.
A chart.
A subreddit.
A creator.
An expert.
Maybe even an entire community dedicated to explaining why people who disagree with you are idiots.
You can build an information environment where you're almost never seriously challenged.
Eventually your beliefs stop feeling like beliefs.
They feel like obvious facts that only a fool could deny.
That's when conversation becomes nearly impossible.
Ask Someone Why Before Telling Them Why
One of the strangest habits in modern disagreement is telling people why they believe something.
"You only believe that because you're privileged."
"You believe that because you're jealous."
"You've been brainwashed."
"You watch too much Fox News."
"You watch too much MSNBC."
"You learned that on TikTok."
"You just hate rich people."
"You just hate poor people."
Maybe.
Or maybe you could ask.
"Why do you believe that?"
Then do something radical.
Wait for the answer.
People will occasionally surprise you.
Maybe there's an experience you didn't know about.
Maybe their reasoning is better than you expected.
Maybe it's worse.
Maybe they misunderstood something.
Maybe you misunderstood something.
Maybe neither of you changes your mind.
The goal isn't automatic agreement.
The goal is accuracy.
At minimum, disagree with what someone actually believes instead of the argument you assigned to them.
Understanding Isn't Endorsement
This needs to be said clearly.
Trying to understand someone does not mean approving of everything they believe.
There are terrible ideas.
There are false claims.
There is prejudice.
There is extremism.
There are arguments that collapse under evidence.
There are people acting in bad faith.
Understanding those things doesn't require pretending they're reasonable.
But understanding why people adopt an idea can still matter.
In fact, if you want to challenge a bad idea effectively, understanding its appeal is considerably more useful than simply calling everyone who believes it stupid.
Insults might feel satisfying.
They're rarely persuasive.
Try Steelmanning Instead
There's a concept used in debate and philosophy called steelmanning.
It's essentially the opposite of a straw man.
A straw man takes someone's argument and turns it into the weakest, easiest-to-attack version.
Steelmanning attempts to identify the strongest reasonable version of the opposing argument before responding to it.
Try it sometime.
Before criticizing a position you dislike, explain it in a way that someone who holds that position would say:
"Yes. That's what I actually believe."
Then respond.
It's much harder.
That's the point.
If your argument only works against the dumbest possible version of the other side, maybe your argument isn't as strong as you thought.
Changing Your Mind Shouldn't Be Embarrassing
We also need to rehabilitate one sentence:
"I was wrong."
Those three words shouldn't be humiliating.
They should indicate that someone learned something.
Yet we often punish people for changing their minds.
Someone holds one position at 25.
Learns.
Experiences life.
Changes their opinion at 40.
Then someone digs up the old quote and says:
"Look at this hypocrite."
Sometimes hypocrisy is real.
But sometimes that's just growth.
If people aren't allowed to change their minds, what exactly are all these arguments supposed to accomplish?
We can't simultaneously demand that people listen to us and ridicule them when listening actually changes them.
You Are Probably Wrong About Something Right Now
Here's the safest prediction anyone can make:
You currently believe something that isn't true.
So do I.
Maybe it's something trivial.
Maybe it's important.
We don't know which belief it is.
That's the problem.
If we knew, we'd presumably stop believing it.
Every one of us is operating with incomplete information.
We're interpreting a complicated world through limited experience.
That should produce at least a little humility.
Not weakness.
Not indecision.
Humility.
The ability to say:
"Based on what I know, this is what I believe. Show me something better."
That's a much stronger intellectual position than pretending you've solved everything.
The Person Across From You Is More Than Their Worst Opinion
Think about someone you love.
Really love.
A spouse.
Parent.
Sibling.
Friend.
Child.
Do you agree with them about everything?
Probably not.
You might even think some of their opinions are ridiculous.
Yet you don't reduce their entire existence to that disagreement.
You know the rest of them.
Their humor.
Their generosity.
Their fears.
Their history.
The things they've survived.
The people they care about.
Strangers don't receive that context.
We encounter one opinion and build the entire person around it.
One political sign.
One social media post.
One bumper sticker.
One comment.
One vote.
Suddenly we know everything about them.
Except we don't.
Another Side
Maybe the person you disagree with really is wrong.
Maybe they're badly wrong.
Maybe you're never going to agree.
But before deciding they're an idiot, try asking yourself something harder:
What would an intelligent, decent person have to experience or believe in order to reach that conclusion?
Then listen.
You might discover a flaw in their reasoning.
You might discover one in yours.
You might discover that the disagreement isn't actually where you thought it was.
Or you might understand their position perfectly and still reject it.
That's okay.
Understanding isn't surrender.
Changing your mind isn't losing.
And disagreement doesn't require contempt.
The world doesn't need fewer opinions.
It needs more people capable of holding strong opinions without forgetting that the person standing on the other side of the argument is still a person.
Because there's one possibility we rarely consider when we're absolutely certain we're right:
Maybe the idiot in the conversation isn't the person asking questions.
Maybe it's the person who decided they already knew all the answers.
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