Gatekeeping the Work Required to Have an Opinion

In leadership, few warning bells should ring louder than that of someone claiming another person has not done the work required to have an opinion. That's not to say everyone's entitled to an opinion; It's to point out anyone who sees themselves an arbiter of the worth of the opinions of others has fallen victim to meritocratic hubris, "the tendency of winners to inhale too deeply of their success" as explained by Michael Sandell:

One day, several years ago, I opened Slack to find a message from someone I up until that point held great respect for. It read as follows (slightly edited for anonymity):

"I really do try to give you the benefit of the doubt (...) but it's not clear that you're doing the work required to have an opinion on many of the areas you seem to feel strongly about in the Charlie Munger sense."

It is rare to experience someone exposing their true selves to this degree, and when it happens it is incumbent upon us to act accordingly. This was my last interaction with this person.

The principle referenced in the message is a bit more nuanced than what was conveyed. Here's the full quote for reference:

“The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things. You have to work hard on it. Ask yourself what are the arguments on the other side. It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents. This is a great mental discipline.” — Charlie Munger

Munger is absolutely right: To successfully argue any opinion, you need a good understanding of the opposing opinion, otherwise you cannot know whether your opinion is justified. But he is also absolutely wrong: To suggest "it's bad to have an opinion you're proud of if you can't state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents" is absurd. This type of thinking only holds water in a debate competition or in a particular type of high-stakes business dealings of which Munger, an American billionaire investor, is familiar. And wielded indiscriminately, as in the aforementioned example, this opinion (because it is an opinion) can become a form of gatekeeping where those in power choose to discard any opinion not in line with their own as uninformed and therefore irrelevant.

Interestingly, Munger's stance seems more nuanced and softer than it appears in that singular quote. Consider this:

“We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side.” —?Charlie Munger

Put together, this becomes less "If you are not fully informed, you cannot have a valid opinion" than "forming an opinion is a constant exercise of iteration through testing the idea against opposing views and improving your argument."

Over the years I've worked on many teams in many roles with many leaders. One of the things I've learned is the value of a leader who enters into conversation with dissenting voices to understand their point of view, where they're coming from, and finds ways to address their concerns (even when that means saying "no"). When I read Munger, what I see is an appeal to this quality in a leader: A humble acceptance that even as a leader you may not have the full picture, and when a new idea, a new opinion, arises, it is incumbent on you, the leader, to understand the opposing view well enough to argue their side and only then make a final determination. Sadly, many leaders I've worked with over the years have gone the opposite route. They gatekeep information, refuse to share information about plans, scope, process, and other components vital to participation, and cast aside any opinion not in line with their own as not well enough informed and therefore irrelevant. eg "it's not clear that you're doing the work required to have an opinion."

The core of the problem here is not the validity of the opinion itself, but who considers themselves the arbiter of this validity.

In 2012, philosopher Patrick Stokes became momentarily famous for an article titled "No, you're not entitled to your opinion" where he stated "You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for."

Using an all-too-familiar example of an anti-vaccination campaigner demanding their views to be given equal footing to those of medical experts, Stokes points out there are degrees and types of opinions:

"'opinion' ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions."

Your "right" to an opinion depends on what type of opinion it is and what types of rights you expect that opinion to be granted, and your knowledge and experience about the matter at hand:

"If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. (...) But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false."

In other words, while my opinion that chocolate covered peanut butter cups is a food crime is one nobody can disagree with because the experience of taste is a unique property of each individual person and it is my opinion about my experience, my opinion on the efficacy of vaccinations is irrelevant compared to that of my father because he's an actual doctor with decades of experience to inform him.

The problem is most opinions don't fall on these outer extremes - personal experience or verifiable fact. Instead, most opinions surround visions and values and ideas about how things could be or should be. In those circumstances, making hard and fast judgements about whether someone has "done the work required to have an opinion" becomes in itself an opinion, and the arbiter of whether the work required has been done becomes the person with the most power. Worse still, the assumption that anyone can know whether another person has "done the work required" to back an opinion is a fallacy:

While in some very specific circumstances (discussions of verifiable facts like vaccine efficacy for example) it is possible to determine whether the required work has been done, in most cases what work is considered sufficient to meet the bar of "work required" is itself a subjective opinion. Furthermore, claiming someone has not done the work required is assuming you yourself have, and that you yourself know both what work the other person has done and that the work you yourself have done is the "right" and "sufficient" work. It's an astounding level of self-deceit and self-aggrandizement, meritocratic hubris of the worst kind, culminating in an opinion much like this: "When your opinion does not align with mine, it must be because you do not have the knowledge I possess, and that knowledge is the only relevant knowledge in this matter. My opinion is the right one, your opinion is irrelevant."

This is not how we build society; it is how discourse dies.

So, after all these years, here's my response:

You never did the work required to understand my point of view, or those of many others. That doesn't mean your opinions were better, or that other opinions were better than yours; It means you will never know. That's your loss. Inhale less deeply of your own success my friend. Find grace in humility.

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Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a Senior Staff Instructor at?LinkedIn Learning?(formerly Lynda.com) focusing on?front-end web development and the next generation of the web platform. He is passionate about diversity, inclusion, and belonging and works every day to build bridges between people to foster solidarity. Morten still doesn't know what artifact to give the museum. Design is political. Code is political. Hope is a catalyst.

Header photo by Ana Flávia on Unsplash