Why are people so sure?
Many people maintain strongly held beliefs or opinions, even when there is a reasonable possibility that they are wrong with respect to their understanding of the current state of affairs or their prediction of future states. For example, many arguments about politics or policy involve highly complex factual assumptions and predictions. Is Obamacare good or bad? Should we go to war with Iran? Should we reduce the federal deficit sooner or later? Despite the difficulty of assessing the validity of current factual assumptions or forecasting the consequences of any particular decision, many people maintain great confidence in the correctness of their beliefs. Why? One explanation, of course, is that beliefs and opinions reflect not only factual judgments but deeply held values as well. But here, again, why are people often so resistant to acknowledging and respecting the values that lead others to their opinions? In law school, students learn to make arguments, and, more particularly, to be able to argue even opposing sides of an issue. That facility should sensitize us to the fragility of our opinions, to the complicated mix of fact and value that inform them. Yet does it? Does law school (and legal culture more generally) leave us more respectful of the views of others? Or more entrenched in our own? In this discussion group, we will not to resolve any of these questions--How could we?--but we will read books that engage these issues in diverse ways. A partial list of the books we plan to read includes these: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind Kathryn Shultz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit