Nuance doesn’t lead to attention

I talk on here quite a bit about understanding the “other side” of disagreements, as it’s a great way to gain both knowledge and empathy. When it comes to taking a stance on an issue, I often fall somewhere in the middle, trying to understand the pros and cons of each side. While I also appreciate this kind of positioning in others, it’s generally not a good way to endear yourself to many people.

In the classic book “ Freakonomics “, they explain:

The typical parenting expert, like experts in other fields, is prone to sound exceedingly sure of himself. An expert doesn’t so much argue the various sides of an issue as plant his flag firmly on one side. That’s because an expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn’t get much attention. An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom. His best chance of doing so is to engage the public’s emotions, for emotion is the enemy of rational argument.

This reminds me of a few things.

First, you have Seth Godin’s idea of “oppositional energy”, where people pick a “they” to fight against and just do whatever their side is supposed to do. It’s lazy, and it’s making us worse.

More closely to this post are Shankar Vedantam’s thoughts on “integrated complexity”, where both sides will fight…