A Brief Defense of Not Knowing Yet
I have gotten more useful things out of admitting ignorance than out of defending a position.
I lost an argument in a parking lot last spring, and the other person was right. Not mostly right. Right.
What stayed with me wasn't the correction — it was how long I'd spent defending a position I had never actually checked. I had confused having an opinion with having done the work.
The expensive part
Certainty is cheap to produce and expensive to hold. Every position I've defended past its usefulness has cost me something: a project, a relationship, a year. Admitting I don't know yet has never cost me anything except the appearance of authority.
So I've started keeping a list. Things I believed a year ago and don't believe now. It's longer than I'd like. It's also the only evidence I have that I'm still paying attention.
What I'm not saying
Not that all views are equal, or that "nobody knows" is a safe place to hide. Someone still has to decide by Thursday. The difference is between deciding with your eyes open and deciding with your hands over them.
Written after losing an argument in a parking lot.
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