debating one's self..........................

 A few years ago, I decided I would try to change my mind about something at least once a month – and that turned out to be way too easy.

I started with politics – we are a polarized nation and I’ve got plenty of opinions about why the other side’s policies are so awful. But if the US is split close to 50/50 on most of these issues, I can’t possibly believe that 160 million people are dead wrong. Or stupid. Or misguided.

I needed to approach my beliefs the way I did when I was debating in high school. I had to prepare myself to be able to articulate and defend a certain side of an argument, but I had to do so without knowing until right before the debate which side I would need to argue for.

The more I did this, the more I realized how shallow so many of my opinions were . . .

-Marc Randolph, from here