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nodoodles
Great question - I've struggled with the opposite, not being opinionated 'enough'.
I've noticed I tend to have more faith in other people's convictions than my own, assuming, essentially, if they believe in something, there must be a great reason behind it
My own opinions tend to be weakly expressed & weakly held. It's usually been good, allowing me to listen and understand others. However, growing in career, I feel my opinions not taken as seriously because the perception of their weakness.
What I've tried, maybe the reverse of it might be helpful:
1. Consciously reflecting that other people have roughly similar amount of self-doubt, even if they don't express it. Even if they present opinions strongly, it doesn't necessarily mean these are right.
2. Lowering the bar for going from 'this might possibly be..' to 'i think this is..' to 'this is..' --- that has been very uncomfortable, and still is depending on the audience.
I love working with peers who don't over-sell their opinions, but have adjusted to have a more equal playing field with those who are more opinionated (both kinds are great people).
+1 to the mention of curiousity elsewhere in the thread - realizing there are many ways to look at anything, all 'right' to some definition of the word based on the person's background and context, can be quite liberating, a fight for being right becomes a journey to understand better how people work.
My 2c, not strong opinions :)
strikelaserclaw
i think some people have a "strong will to dominate", it has nothing to do with how much thought they put into their opinions (although putting down thought does help a lot), i think it just a psychological/physical phenomenon (a function of ego, pride, hubris, wanting to be the center of attention etc...) . Throughout my life, i saw myself as an individual on a journey to fulfill my curiosity, whenever circumstances dictated that i push my opinion onto others, i would rather retreat than to convince people that i was right.
dasil003
It's true that some people want to dominate others regardless what course of action would give the best outcome. I don't think the modern knowledge economy—especially Tech—is particularly rewarding for these folks though. Modern civilization is so complex that real expertise is required to drive meaningful impact. Of course there are still domains like politics where charisma and force-of-will are the primary factors, but I think there's more opportunity for those without those qualities than ever before.
On the other hand, being thoughtful and competent, but conflict-avoidant, is also potentially career limiting. I say potentially because you can still go quite far if the right people recognize your talent and you develop a reputation for being someone to listen to.
The sweet spot though, is recognizing the power and need for influence, but in pursuit of outcomes, not personal glory. In such a framework your idea is no more valuable to you than any other idea. You also don't need to directly convince everyone of what you know, you can simply make timely observations and ask questions to nudge folks towards the right conclusion independently. Finally, you want to cultivate the humility and self-awareness to realize your own biases and limitations. All paths are tradeoffs, all narratives are reductive and all outcomes are probabilistic.
saltcured
To make matters worse, it's not just inner versus expressed confidence that varies. The confidence may or may not be warranted at all. Not everyone is aware of their own competency.
Similarly, many real world problems lack direct visibility. A person or group may not know enough facts to know what problem they are facing. Ideally, this is a multi-stage problem (i.e. troubleshooting) where you first diagnose the problem and then think about how to address it. (Edit to add: and diagnostics can be iterative, where you have to form a hypothesis and test with a low-risk or low-cost solution to help gather more evidence.)
But, a common group dynamics challenge is that members of the group may not communicate well enough and therefore lack a shared understanding. Once they diverge in terms of their belief about the problem at hand, subsequent debates can become mutually incomprehensible due to unstated assumptions. And, if one member realizes the divergence and tries to steer the group back together, they may face agitated resistance from the members who have already jumped to conclusions as "fact". They may not even realize that there was an earlier starting point and some of their "facts" are supposition...
roenxi
> However, growing in career, I feel my opinions not taken as seriously because the perception of their weakness.
Hot tip, if you do have a problem it isn't the strength of your opinions and probably isn't your ability to express them either. Assess the situation to see if one of these 3 things hold:
1) You don't have a lot of experience in the domains in question.
2) The conversation is drifting away from how to reliably make/keep the situation good.
3) Multiple people don't see the things you think are obvious and would benefit from someone stating them - but you're focusing the conversation on things you are uncertain about rather than things you understand well.
Picking a workplace classic, someone really confidently starts advocating that we need to migrate the database from Postgres to NoSQLDb. And who knows? Maybe they're right. If you want the play for an unopinionated person it is to loudly say "wow, this is risky but might have a big payoff!", and get a feel for the boss' appetite for risk. If low, talk up all the problems with NoSQL databases and give him cover to say no, or alternative low-risk strategies to try and fix the problem. If high, start talking about ways to embrace the change while keeping risks low (+ make a friend of the NoSQL guy because you're supporting him).
Bam, everyone is a winner, particularly the dude with no opinion. The trap that was set is trying to take a strong position on something you don't understand. Workplace success comes from making the room better just by being there.
tacitusarc
I think being a sycophant is rarely a good long term strategy. More importantly, I don’t think it’s an ethical one.
roenxi
I'm intrigued. Why do you think that is being a sycophant? Which bit do you not like?
kamlaserbeam
I don't have much to contribute to your post but I feel a lot of these struggles in my life. With opinions relating to technology I think most of it comes to me not having an industry experience (still in university). With topics such as politics or history sometimes I feel I can't have an opinion unless I've read a book or done very extensive research on a topic or field. I've recently tried to use your second point of lowering the bar of what constitutes a good strong opinion, but like you said it depends a lot on the situation and audience.
Rygian
Same here, I'm aligned with what you describe.
There are some exceptions, though (tabs are evil, etc…) where I have a strong opinion, and sometimes I fantasize about strongly holding it. I am conscious about letting any of those pet peeves become anything bigger.
As of late, I make an effort to evaluate the person in front of me and decide, case by case, if they have enough self-doubt about themselves. Many times it reflects back on my own self-doubt and helps me gauge it.
rr888
This is a American culture thing as well. It regularly surprises me how people that sounded like experts actually turned out to know less than me. I've come to learn to discount anything American-raised people say and double the assumed knowledge of a quiet person from other places.
brailsafe
I stopped being opinionated when I realized that the vast majority of what I'd be opinionated about pretty much doesn't matter enough at all, or doesn't matter enough to get worked up about. It's an ego thing, and being serious about relatively mundane things is pretty fragile. Not that opinions in general are bad, but even if one is very well-informed, one choice over another often just isn't very significant.
Especially in code, if there's a reason to pick one style over another and it seems preferable, I'll say that, but if someone does something else it's probably pretty negligible, and any sensible opinion should change over time anyway.
If someone on my team was very opinionated, I'd think of it as immature. In a non-professional context, I might argue for the fun but that's it. I like back and forth more than black and white.
muzani
Listen before speaking. Be willing to let another person change your opinion.
If you're only here to enforce your opinion, then don't talk about the topic. This is why religion and politics are usually not welcome in most parts.
There was an opinionated conversation on anarchy philosophy a few weeks ago on front page HN. Most of the comments came from people who obviously did not open the link at all. Some from people who copied snippets out of context to attack.
This happens because they were not planning to have a conversation. They were not open to the idea that anarchy could be superior to democracy. It's fine to hold firm opinions, but pointless going into discussions with them.
lol768
> This is why religion and politics are usually not welcome in most parts.
This is a very "American" view. Plenty of folks manage to have conversations about these topics in a respectful way - and yes, that includes conversations with strangers and in the workplace too. I don't know why they're so polarising in some contexts, as if everyone has to maintain complete loyalty to their "sports team" and has no time for anyone with differing views, but it's a sad state of affairs to me.
choko
Personally speaking, I stopped sharing opinions around these topics once I saw people losing their livelihoods for carrying the "wrong" opinions. I'll still discuss with close friends and family. My sister and I have some very spirited conversations around politics, but I wouldn't do the same with my boss. I don't even know what my boss's opinions are and I'm fine with that. As for the "American" comment, there are countries where physical altercations happen in Parliament over political disagreements. Holding passionate opinions is definitely not unique to Americans.
Jensson
There aren't many countries where you will get fired for supporting the wrong party, because in most countries you need to be fired for cause. USA is the odd one out here since employers can fire you for whatever reason they like, so managers are used to abusing that power while in other countries managers just learns to work with people instead of firing them at a whim.
kamlaserbeam
I've always been interested in differing experiences with discussing politics and religion especially outside of talks with close friends and loved ones. Outside of that it's almost always uncomfortable.
csdvrx
> This happens because they were not planning to have a conversation
Interesting. Would you have a link?
sebastianconcpt
The more you read diverse ideas, diverse political views, diverse paradigms, diverse worldviews, diverse literature, the wider your conscience horizon you'll have. That will make it more certain on where to be more or less opinionated and, more importantly, when is worth to express it.
I'm very opinionated in a lot of things that I don't give enough f*ks to really care about other people understanding. Removing them from their ignorance would be so titanic that I prefer to stay humble and go with the flow.
There is a line tho.
If "go with the flow" means to be a slave of peer pressure and corrupt yourself being a price for it, then that's a deal breaker and will require the conscience to reflect and reevaluate on life course and update decisions on things that might lead you to change who will be around you in the future.
The most powerful position is to be able to fire everybody if needed (specially employers) :D
akomtu
May I ask you, what is a "diverse idea"?
sebastianconcpt
Sure. By diversity of ideas I mean different models of reality.
It could be at different levels (more compartmentalized or more general). For example classic physics and quantic physics will give you 2 diverse ways to observe reality (one happens to include the other but that can be considered an accident).
When we're talking about more general diverse ideas, I mean the kind of diversity that leads to the understanding of different world views (or cosmovisions, as in having many different cosmic worldview of a society or civilization).
pfarrell
Had a manager who emphasized the mantra for our team. “Strong opinions, loosely held”.
Over time I’ve come to appreciate this more and more. The “loosely held” portion is important for allowing respectful differences of opinion and building a team together. But the “strong opinions” portion is equally important. You should be opinionated and understand why you hold those opinions and be able to defend them. But also learn to hear dissenting viewpoints and value them too.
jacklar
This right here.
Be strongly opinionated, but be comfortable with updating that opinion once you have new information.
Updating is the hard skill to master.
You have to be willing to separate ego from ideas and thoughts and be okay saying I was wrong or my idea/thoughts are no longer valid / the most accurate with this new information.
You also have to be willing to be curious and open to new information and counter points that will invalidate or weaken your opinion.
Be opinionated, debate like hell, but once new information is available be willing and okay with changing and updating your view if it makes sense.
cheschire
An important aspect of the "strong opinion" for me has been taking the time to do some self analysis and, as you said, understand why I hold that opinion.
Many of the issues I've seen in team engagements come from folks not being willing to dig deeper on their own feelings in an open setting. They end up passively resenting the path the team takes because their opinions are still very much a subconscious thing with poorly defined edges.
kennxfl
In a non-tech context, majority of people get very emotional about held beliefs or ideas based on their stories and personal truth. A challenge to these beliefs, even indirectly, is generally perceived as an attack on the individual. Listening to opinions diametrically opposite to your own without harboring any resentment takes a lot of mental training.
Prcmaker
Very much this. I will have deep opinions, based in as much fact as is available. If new facts are available, I do my best to constantly re-evaluate what those opinions are.
stdbrouw
"I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing human reason is. I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth: they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes." (Michel de Montaigne)
I feel like open-mindedness is something you can practice. Strong and inflexible opinions are often the result of motivated reasoning, and motivated reasoning occurs when you feel that to believe certain things would harm your identity. But the thing is, it doesn't have to harm your identity unless you let it. You can feel strongly about social justice and equality, and still calmly read about e.g. minimum wage, all of the pros and cons and the results of empirical studies without, poof, instantly turning into a neoconservative.
The other thing to realize is that being very settled in your opinions also means that you're probably closing yourself off from other perspectives and new information – you already know everything there is to know, which is why you're so vocal about it. But again, there's really no need for any of this. You can eat meat but listen to a vegan explain their choices without feeling the need to defend your own opinion and without feeling that not to immediately make a counterargument would make you lose the argument and to admit to being a bad person. Who cares about winning arguments? Try to learn something new instead, even if only why other people think what they think.
When you think along those lines, over time you'll (hopefully) become less emotionally attached to your opinions, less tribal and less easily riled up whenever someone says something you disagree with.
cardanome
Chestertone's fence
> In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'
Applying it more broadly, we have a tendency to reject things we don't understand. But isn't rejecting something you don't understand just plain ignorance?
So the next time someone has a opinion you disagree with, ask yourself why this person has the opinion. It is easy to say they are stupid and ignorant and that might be true but are you sure? Might there not be good reasons for their position?
If you show a willingness to understand the opposing side, people will be more open to you and your ideas and working together will go more smoothly. Your own opinions will not rest on ignorance but on well qualified arguments.
drewcoo
> But isn't rejecting something you don't understand just plain ignorance?
No. I should not have to know all of the reasons for everything a human has ever done before I act. Chesterton wanted to halt progress. I would call his view ignorant.
Do I need to deeply ponder all the reasons why someone deserves to be thirsty before I offer them water? No.
gjulianm
A lot of context lacks here. Is this in the workplace? In your life?
As other commenters have said, sometimes being less opinionated isn't good. There are some core principles that you maintain strongly.
But, if you really want to be less opinionated in a certain aspect, try to understand why would someone have a different opinion, in a compassionate way (that is, if your conclusion is "someone having X opinion must be ignorant/careless/evil" or something to that effect, you're doing it wrong). Usually, trying to put yourself in a mental situation where you'd have a different opinion will reveal arguments that you didn't consider before.
rr888
Read "how to win friends and influence people". You can be strongly opinionated but avoid the "expressing" part. If someone you're talking to is wrong it isn't your job to change their mind.
zupatol
Paul Graham wrote a great essay that's related to this: keep your identity small http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
incomingpain
Not too familiar with this paul graham person but I've read a few really good essays from him.
What would you say are his top ones?
rsstack
incomingpain
Also found this after asking: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
I was moreso asking that person which were the best.
bombcar
If it is your area of expertise (actual expertise not “I read a bunch about it”) then I’d expect you to have strong opinions. Linus Torvalds without strong opinions on C would be really weird.
If it is not your area of expertise don’t have strong opinions as they’d likely be wrong.
This has interesting implications for politics.
shanusmagnus
This is 80% a very good point; for the other 20%, I think sometimes about how experts in my field will still disagree, vehemently, about stuff in the field, and seemingly show all the same biases -- they're defending territory, they're viciously contesting for status, vs trying to get closer to "the truth" through the scientific method.
No one is immune, so whatever wisdom the OP gains on this quest will still be useful even if s/he attains the ultimate height of expertise on whatever topic.
bombcar
Yeah, expert disagreement does occur (we can see it in real time on HN itself) and often it boils down to "I don't want to do more work" or "that is better but the cost/benefit isn't there".
But even then it's better than uninformed arm-chair quarterbacking. And for those watching from the sidelines, if you watch long enough, you start to get a "feel" for the various sides.
shanusmagnus
I suppose it at least narrows the points of disagreement? So that, e.g., economists will agree on a _lot_ of stuff, even though their points of contention are so magnified that it appears they agree on nothing?
The HN example is interesting. The one topic that comes up consistently on HN that I feel like I have expert-level knowledge of (bitcoin) reveals mostly tribalism / religion couched as rational discussion. It was the most visceral illustration for me of that construct (can't remember the term) about how you read about some topic in the newspaper where you have expertise and say to yourself: this is such crap, they've missed all the nuance. And then you go on to other parts of the newspaper and believe it un-critically.
vehemenz
It has interesting implications for philosophy too. Intelligent people often have strong, but uncritical opinions, despite a lack of training to defend their ideas rigorously.
I don't mean in this in any gatekeeping sense, but this is my view as a philosopher who has lots of experience watching brilliant people fumble through their fervently held positions.
tenebrisalietum
If X is tied to your identity, you will have strong ideas and opinions about X.
To correct this, perform some analysis and see if it is not really a weakness.
Some probing questions:
- What do you "win" when you force others to understand X is right?
- Are you caught up in a relationship or para-relationship where someone else Y is actually winning because you are proselytizing X?
- If so, is this relationship a net benefit to you? Why are you supporting Y, is Y benefiting you directly? Are you dependent on Y? Do you want to be dependent on Y?
- Could Y possibly be using explicit or implicit consequences, fears, or money to manipulate you?
- "Warrior fallacy" - if you perceive yourself as "fighting" for a side, who really cares? Are you caught in social media outrage loops which is really a self-affirmation indulgence? How does your "battle" really affect important things like your paycheck or your mode/method of living up and above things you can do yourself?
- "Individualism fallacy" = "if only each individual does X then problem Y is fixed" when the real problem is an entity much more powerful than a single individual. Refusing to deal the true root cause always results in failure, but you may feel like you are "doing something." Don't be blind.
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opinionated person = having and expressing very strong ideas and opinions about things.