Beware of strongly held beliefs
Opinion
We live in a Wonderland kind of world in which an opinion is treated as if it is fact. We should all agree on the need to know true facts versus strongly held opinions — and how to tell the difference.
The arrival of Donald Trump back at the White House is a stark reminder that he always has an opinion and doesn’t hold back from expressing it. And with any pronouncement comes the full weight of his office as US president, giving his expressed thoughts enormous power — something that he and his followers clearly relish.
We can all be guilty of overconfidence from time to time. For example, not preparing properly for a meeting because we thought it was going to be straightforward and easy, or those times when we refuse to accept critical feedback because we are convinced that we know better.
But, on the whole, most of us are open to being given information that causes us to pause and reflect. We may have an initial opinion that we hold fairly strongly, but the point of critical thinking is that the presentation of new data makes us prepared to change our mind.
Danger of inflated self-belief
One phenomenon that crops up often in my coaching is people reporting that they experience imposter syndrome.
On the opposite side of imposter syndrome sits overconfidence, otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who experience this effect overestimate their abilities and achievements, and are stubbornly ignorant of their own ignorance. As a result, they are a bit of a “know it all” and tend to be dogmatic and dictatorial.
When we come across people like this, we may find ourselves describing them as entitled, opinionated and conceited. They are not great people to work with and trying to influence them can feel like hitting a brick wall.
We can recognise these characteristics in the current president of the US and an alarming number of political leaders emerging across the world with autocratic tendencies.
The Dunning-Kruger effect may seem like an odd concept to be concerned about, as we typically praise confidence and self-assurance. Indeed, all too often, we are frustrated when our colleagues don’t readily speak their minds and share their point of view.
However, just like how simple self-criticism can snowball into full-blown, debilitating imposter syndrome, inflated self-belief can develop into ignorance and arrogance. And while we would all agree that it’s important to foster confidence and self-belief, we need to be wary of people who hold big megaphones and power but whose views are not to be trusted.
Not all expressed viewpoints have equal value.
Free speech has no value without critical thinking
Considerable attention these days is given to the importance of free speech and the respect that should be afforded to all belief systems.
I don’t think enough is being given to critical thinking. The ability to evaluate the information we are given, think independently and use reason to guide us to a fair conclusion is crucial.
Instead, “common sense” is being heralded as the new standard of judgement. But, as we all know, common sense is literally that: a set of beliefs that are held by a large number of people. It is no substitute for proper independent enquiry and analysis.
These days, we have to be ever more discerning about whose opinions we are taking on board and whether we consider them to be based on first-hand experience or supporting facts.
We only have to read Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to glimpse at the perils of nonsense. It is Alice who famously says: “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be.”
Carroll was a mathematics professor at the University of Oxford who valued logic and reasoning, and used the story to explore a world that is governed by very different rules to our own. In trying to make sense of Wonderland and manage her own anxiety, the little girl tries to understand the nonsensical rules that govern it. But, in the end, she is grateful to wake up back in the real world and to find the whole experience was a dream.
We are less fortunate with Trump, since he is not in a dream, and we can observe people, like Alice did, trying to understand the rules of his “MAGA” world.
Let’s not go back to the dark ages
In the real world, we know that just because someone believes something to be true doesn’t mean it is.
Our history is littered with previously commonly held beliefs, such as the Earth is flat or that human health is determined by bodily fluids (humors). Scientific investigation based on systematic examination of the evidence found these beliefs to be untrue. Now we can look back with disdain at doctors who recommended bloodletting to treat disease and call them quacks.
But we need to be careful that we don’t find ourselves falling into similar traps today, when the momentum of a shared opinion overwhelms the facts. The one thing we should all agree on is the desire to know true facts versus strongly held opinions — and how to tell the difference.
I am the first to agree that people are entitled to their thoughts and beliefs. But there really do have to be limits on what we are allowed to say if empirical evidence demonstrates such beliefs to be fundamentally untrue. I don’t know how the right to free speech became the right to lie and mislead, but it’s a worrying trend.
The fact that the BBC has a whole process of verifying facts that sits underneath its stories tells us there is a profound danger. Not long ago, we would have assumed that the BBC was reporting based on substantiated information. Now it is forced to explain why we should believe the organisation and that it would help us understand why other sources of news may be misleading.
Beware shortcuts to our own opinions
In the same way, we need to be vigilant ourselves. I always try to explain my thinking and quote any sources of information. I don’t use AI to write my articles and resent the way I am increasingly being offered “summaries”, even in my email feed. Summarising is a form of critical thinking I am reluctant to relinquish. Yes, it’s quicker and easier not to engage with source material, but to do so also means we are not engaging our brains fully either.
It is my opinion that Trump is arrogant and overconfident, and it frightens me that he doesn’t seem open to reason. We are all dumbfounded trying to make sense of his world view because, while it is rooted in vested interests, it doesn’t seem to relate to our knowledge of the world.
How ironic that his social media platform is called Truth Social and all you have to do is call it “truth”. This is a Wonderland kind of world in which an opinion is treated as if it is fact. And, even worse, there is a belief that if that opinion is commonly held by a large group of people, that alone should give it weight.
So, as I assess whose opinion to trust, I watch out for people who prefer to talk about their beliefs or “common sense” rather than the evidence. I am always curious about the sources of people’s information. And I am increasingly wary of using AI summaries at the expense of my own critical thinking.
For all its complexity, I prefer to try to make sense of the world myself.
Jan Gooding is one of the UK’s best-known brand marketers, having worked with Aviva, BT, British Gas, Diageo and Unilever. She is now an executive coach and is also chair of Pamco and Utopia. She writes for The Media Leader each month.