Meeting on "why should I listen to your "stupid" opinion?

Mano had his philosopher's cafe in New Westminster on Wednesday.

A number of interesting points came out of the discussion.

Most people wanted to be accommodating, taking the view that it is always possible that no matter how "stupid" an opinion is, we should listen to it in case there is something more to it than meets the eye initially.

Mano mentioned the two meanings to the word respect.

We can respect someone's opinion because we want to extend reasonable accommodation to another fellow human being.

The other meaning of respect is that we have been impressed with this person's previous demonstration of intelligence and therefore place more importance to what he has to say about the subject.

The first respect is out of courtesy to other beings while the second notion of respect is earned.

There was also the suggestion that we best separate the opinion itself from the person expressing it;  to evaluate the idea on its own merits.

However, we can't help but carry a score card for efficiency sake so that we know how much attention to pay to someone based on what their previous statements were like.

People also seem to adopt opinion and positions.  Once agreed and expressed, this adopted position becomes entangled with the person's pride and the temptation to defend it rather than to listen to contrary opinions take over.

However, I suspect that Mano's original intention for this topic is not so much as to how we listen and accept "stupid" opinion from others but how we can determine that the opinion is of no value and can be discarded.

He put out examples of conspiracy theories such as the suggestion that we never went on the moon and that the whole moon exploration footage was acted out in a studio somewhere.  Or that the US war in Iraq was orchestrated by Obama to..........

These far out opinions and ideas are so unbelievable that they simply are not worth our time and consideration and we should have some way to rule them out.

Mano suggested "filters".

By that I think he meant that with our life experience we gradually form reasonable ways of determining the credibility of a narrative or opinion.

Whether it is based on the background of the person proposing the idea, or how the idea will agree with other known facts or physical behavior, we can judge whether the idea is plausible or outlandish.

Or we can check with other trusted sources to verify aspects of the opinion or narrative for consistency.

I agree that this is a practical way of dealing with everyday events but unfortunately it will also rule out the "black swan" exceptions.

If we have not ever seen a black swan but only white ones, it is all too easy for us to not trust accounts of black swans.

All the "filters" of the people believing in a flat earth will find the current spherical earth theory to be ridiculous.

I am reminded of the popularity of stereo amplifiers in the '70s and '80s to come with high frequency filters to filter out hiss from record player noise from dust on records and low frequency filters to filter out rumble from the motor noise on record players.

These filters were only found on the audio amplifiers that were representing themselves as the "high end" stereo equipment.

The really good stereo amplifiers have not filters at all. 

The high fidelity connoisseurs would rather spend effort cleaning their records and fixing their record players to eliminate the hiss and rumble rather than filter it out afterwards because the filters also filter out high and low frequency sounds of the music that they wanted to hear.

So "filters" are efficient and effective in a lot of cases but unfortunately, they can also block out the occasional truth.

Thereafter, we no longer know what the real music is like and our notion of good music is affected by our filters which makes it even more difficult for us to appreciate real music.

So what are we to do?

Be accommodating to a lot of nonsense just in case there is a black swan in there?

Be efficient and filter out the nonsense and let the occasional truth float up through others with less stringent filters?

As always, there is no definite answer or else life will be too boring!