Against Arrogance

Deciding that my “thinking very hard” is better than yours either requires more specific (externally observable) criteria, or an arrogant assumption that I am smarter. Any argument that depends on the objective superiority of one person’s subjective internal processes over another’s, is arrogant. I claim that arrogant arguments should be avoided, on both ethical and epistemological grounds – and any framework that can only be justified with arrogance, should be discarded. Where there are multiple narratives that are equally “true” (in predictive value and inter-subjective evaluation), I propose we break ties by looking at what is more useful instead of resorting to arrogance in a quest for Truth.

A Difference of Values: “This is by design” does not refute “This is wrong”

Fact: “our government was not designed to be a democracy where everyone has equal say.”

Fact: “our government was designed to be a federation of states, all with their own government, which is why every state gets the same amount of Senators”

Those are both facts. They are both true. They are not opposing arguments any more than “the sun is a star” is a rebuttal to “the earth is a planet”. This is not a question of ignorance. The difference is in the implicit assumption about political imagination.