opinions
I'm still feeling uncomfortable about the post I wrote yesterday and I've been trying to figure out why. I'm not retracting my opinion, but I'm wondering under what circumstances it's appropriate to express it. I definitely have a problem with expressing an opinion about anything. That's probably a big reason I hardly ever write about anything of significance beyond myself here. I always assume that what I think is wrong and someone who knows better will be able to immediately point out the huge flaws in my reasoning.
One reason I don't talk much in real life is that I don't often tell anyone my opinion (hence my housemates' justified belief that I could hate them and they wouldn't know). I don't have enough confidence in what I think to expect either that others will agree with me, or that I'll be able to defend my ideas if they don't.
Talking about myself is the only way I can be confident that I know enough about the topic to have an opinion. When I write about books, I always feel like someone is going to object to my representation of the book, or whether I thought it was good or not, but at least it's only meant to be a subjective opinion.
In this case, I'm feeling especially bad, because I didn't just state an opinion; I tried to pick holes in someone else's argument. Someone who's put a lot of work and thought into their opinion, unlike me who hasn't read any other evolutionary psych. literature and whose annoyance is based mainly on popular conceptions and representations of the field.
I think I was assuming yesterday that you would either agree with me or, more likely, be knowledgeable enough to tell me why I was wrong. Nobody did argue that I was wrong, but I guess I feel like somebody should've, since I can't possibly know what I'm talking about...
On the other hand, I would feel far more able to defend my arguments against acupuncture, or other alternative “medicine”, since I know a lot more about biology than psychology, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable actually using those arguments when confronted by someone who believes in it, and I'd probably hesitate to write a post about it, in case anyone who doesn't agree with me might read it. So I guess it comes down to the fact that I'm afraid people will disagree with me and therefore not like me.
This means I'm restricted to only mentioning things with which nobody could disagree (as I largely am in real life). But somehow other people manage to express opinions without alienating others.
How much do you have to know about something before you can criticise it without looking like an idiot? And even if you can back up your arguments, is it worth offending people? Am I being incredibly patronising by thinking people who believe different things would be offended?
posted by Lucy @ 5:26 PM
7
comments
7 Comments:
Well, there are plenty of people who don't think they need to know anything about something before they offer an opinion about it. There are plenty more people who think that reading a single book or spending 15 minutes with Professor Google allows them to offer an expert opinion. Somehow they don't seem to worry about offending others, nor do they seem aware that they do indeed look like idiots.
I do think it's possible to critically think about something even if you're not an expert on the topic. For example, my husband sometimes finds it useful to bounce ideas about his work off me, though I have no training in the field, because I can sometimes offer a critique that he's been trained not to see. However. The fact that I may sometimes have something useful to offer does not mean that I always do, or even usually do. My critical thinking skills do not trump his deep knowledge.
I don't think the answer is to never offer an opinion, or to spend months of your life researching something before you offer an opinion. I think the most workable solution is to offer your opinions with humility in inverse proportion to the knowledge that informs them.
Some people find that a bit difficult, but you, Lucy, are not one of them. A lack of humility is definitely not your weak point. So please share your opinions with us. They are fascinating. And you never know when someone with real expert knowledge will come along to contribute to the discussion, and find that their own thinking has been changed thanks to your criticism.
Critical discussions have the potential to go badly, so I really respect your apprehension here. Let's say I'm having a bad day and someone offers a semi-critical comment without having a clear motive. I assume that person is trying to hurt my feelings and everything's icky.
But most of the time I feel OK about life, understand that people are just talking, and either ignore them or gently offer my opinion in response. In your case, you were absolutely clear that you were willing to be corrected or listen to ideas. So I find it difficult to believe that anyone could be offended when it was abundantly clear that you didn't want them to be upset. Does that make sense?
You're obviously bright, thoughtful and eloquent. I really understand your hesitation to speak up - I do that sometimes too - but people would be quite lucky to know what you're thinking. :)
Yeah, what they said, since they said it better than I could. And I have very similar hesitations about offering my opinion...even about things that are *directly* related to my research. How lame is *that*? :)
I'm wondering under what circumstances it's appropriate to express [my opinion].
It's your blog. What could be more appropriate?
And speaking as an evolutionary biologist, I love bitching about evo psych. So bring it on! But I do understand the hesitancy; I've felt that way myself about blogposts sometimes. But almost always the feedback is good or, at worst, thought-provoking. And I get to delete rude comments, so really, what is there to lose?
Actually, that post was the first time I'd seen any argument against evolutionary psych that made sense to me. (I haven't seen many; it's not my field.)
Thanks for your encouragement.
I think my other problem with stating an opinion is that I don't get enough practice at it and there are numerous times when I have tried and I've chosen the exact wrong thing to say, or time to say it, and offended someone horribly. It's easier just to avoid saying what I think altogether, but then when I do try, I panic that I've said something wrong again.
I read an article about kids with selective mutism recently that suggested some might stop talking because they haven't learnt any other way of self-regulating. Maybe it's kind of like that.
Luckybuzz, I have just as much, or even more, trouble stating an opinion about my research. How comfortable I feel is strongly related to how much I know relative to the person I'm talking to. And even the person's ability to ask questions. I feel like just as much of an idiot trying to explain something to a non-scientist as to my advisor, often.
Coming from a molecular genetics and evolution background plus a little critical theory in my undergraduate English major days, I agree with you about evo psych. It sets off my BS-meter constantly. On the one hand I firmly believe that some genes must have some influence on behavior and by extension psychology and behavior; but on the other hand an awful lot of the causal relationships advanced by evo devo-niks seem like Just-So Stories or plain garbage. Questions are posed in innately biased ways (even the descriptive terms, like the famous "rape in honeybees" description - do honeybees usually consent to sex? if so, how could the observers tell that these ones didn't?); metrics are badly defined (like "beauty" here) and often very hard to correlate with any actual gene (how many genes underlie "beauty"? given how many genetic defects can make people "look funny," it's got to be an enormous number - with wildly varying levels of contribution); and no real attempts are made to weed out or test for possible confounders (like, uh, environmental factors, maybe?!).
But I mainly just wanted to support you in being opinionated and putting your opinions out. There are lots of reasons why something can "feel wrong," and not all of them are intellectually or morally supportable - but if you don't put your opinions out in the world, or at least write them up for yourself, you can't figure out why you think or feel what you do. Something could "feel wrong" to you because of logic problems that you can identify (either right off the bat or with some cogitation) and describe; or logic problems you can't quite get at but that are still there; or even because of innate bias you aren't aware about (so you might be wrong to think it's wrong). There's no way of knowing which it is if you don't state your opinion. Hopefully you will occasionally change your opinion in some of those last cases!
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