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Comment by adrusi | Hacker News Reader

You don't need to understand something well to be justified in having a strong opinion about it. Your belief should be based on the evidence you have, even if that means a small amount that leads you to an extreme conclusion. Otherwise you will have a bias toward the median belief, and there's no reason to expect, in general, that a median belief is any better than an extreme one. The strength of your evidence should only affect the level of attachment that you have to your belief.

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If you don't understand something well, then any opinion you might claim to have on it is not actually on it, but rather on what you currently understand it to be. In that case, why not just say that you simply don't know enough to have an informed opinion?

In that case, why not just say that you simply don't know enough to have an informed opinion?

Up against a dishonest debater, this is exploitable to lessen your influence, even if your position is relatively stronger, against (unsubstantiated) claims of being an expert.

"ball_of_lint claims to be uninformed and doesn't have an opinion. That's okay, listen to me, I'm an expert"

So you'd rather win one debate at the cost of loosing reputation for years?

If someone strongly claims they know something and I later find out that they were wrong, I simply can't trust that person ever again.

If someone strongly claims they know something and I later find out that they were wrong, I simply can't trust that person ever again.

I'm glad you're a critical enough thinker to do that (although it's unfortunate that you don't account for honest conviction or that person obtaining further understanding such that they change their position; after all, not all strong claims revealed to be wrong are meant to deceive). Not everyone is that kind of critical thinker, especially up against a savvy, dishonest debater/character/charlatan. Some people just keep shouting "I know the answer" or "Believe me!" to every question or issue and they end up with a following.

> Your belief should be based on the evidence you have, even if that means a small amount that leads you to an extreme conclusion.

That's one way of thinking, but I reject it. You'll easily be manipulated by political and corporate agendas if you think this way.

Often my own intuition is at odds with the "evidence I have" and I turn out to be right later. If I had jumped to the (extreme) conclusion that smoking was healthy back in the 70s and 80s because of the evidence big tobacco was pushing from the shadows (doctors recommending brands, etc) I might not be here today.

You won't be easily manipulated by virtue of having strong opinions, as long as they're weakly held, because you'll probably state your strong opinion to someone who knows better than you. If your opinion is actually weakly held, you'll recognize that their opinion is closer to the truth and adjust yours accordingly.

Often my own intuition is at odds with the "evidence I have" and I turn out to be right later.

I mean evidence in a broad sense, encompassing all information available to you for basing your worldview upon, including your intuition. If your intuition has been reliable in the past, and the scientific evidence was being put out by entities with obvious incentives for a certain conclusion, then it's rational to weigh your intuition highly relative to the scientific evidence.

What does 'a strong opinion' mean to you? Because I think we have different ideas of what that means.

I think the people who are against forming strong opinions on little data, thinks it essentially means being confident, speaking your mind, and influencing others towards seeing things your way, when you haven't done much research into a topic. Which I think is a bad idea, because it has a high chance of propagating misinformation.

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