Reading some old posts of mine, I got to thinking about the problem of confidence. Or, really, the problem of over-confidence.

So many of our arguments, be they about politics or about more mundane affairs, come down to the problem of over-confidence, because we live in a world in which people are overly confident about opinions that aren't true. But I'm not talking about the fringe wingnuts who hold beliefs with little to no evidence, and with a complete disregard for it, because their craziness quickly reveals itself. It might not be possible to change their mind, but it's pretty easy to recognize and avoid these people.

Instead, I'm thinking about a more problematic version of over-confidence that has to do with people who do have a sense of what they're talking about, and who know their topic in at least a minimal fashion. From their point of view they hold a position that is a position based on facts. But oftentimes, they're working from a limited set of facts, so that they can only hold their position at the expense of other facts.

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