Everyone’s got an opinion, but are you intellectually worthy of holding one?

‘Having opinions’ and having ‘back-able opinions’ are 2 different things.

Building the intellectual spine to really ‘back’ your opinions requires a fair amount of hard work, but we all dodge it cuz it isn’t easy.

However, there’s no shortcut.

You have to look at the variables, and listen to their oppositions. You have to think deeply, evade your confirmation bias, drop your emotional guards to allow criticism to change you..

You have to do the reading → the diverse the better, the rigorous the better. You have to engage with smart people, understand their perspectives, observe their twitches, read their micro expressions. It is not easy → it requires you to have a grounding intellectual humility → the humility to be proven wrong, and as many times as it takes till you solidify the facts you had based your previous opinion on.

The truth (my opinion) is that the work required to get to the stage of ‘knowing’ can’t be skimped on or skipped on → it will need you to give in.        

It is not easy, but that’s how you become intellectually worthy of holding an opinion.