Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero.original_ [20]
Those who sincerely follow reason, but lack sound, overall good sense, and so do not look at all sides of an issue. They tend to talk with one type of person, read one type of book, and so are exposed to only one viewpoint.9
To Locke's list we should add one more type – people who never bother to reexamine an opinion once it has been formed. These people are often the most error-prone of all, for they forfeit all opportunity to correct mistaken opinions when new evidence arises.
INFORMED VERSUS UNINFORMED OPINION
If experts can, like the rest of us, be wrong, why are their views more highly valued than the views of nonexperts? Many people wonder about this, and some conclude that it is a waste of time to consult the experts. Let's look at some situation and see if this conclusion is reasonable.
What are the effects of hashish on those who smoke it? We could ask a person who never saw or smelled it, let alone smoked it. It would, of course, make better sense to get the opinion of a smoker or to take a poll of a large number of smokers. Better still would be the opinion of one or more trained observers, research scientists who have conducted studies of the effects of hashish smoking. (At least one such group, a team of army doctors, has found that heavy use of hashish leads to severe lung damage. Also, if the smoker is predisposed to schizophrenia, it can cause long-lasting episodes of that disorder.)10
A giant quasar is positioned on what may be the edge of our universe, 10 billion light years away from us.11 (To calculate the distance in miles, just multiply the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, times the number of seconds in a day, 86,400; net, multiply that answer times the number of days in a year, 365; finally, multiply that answer by 10,000,000,000.) The pinpoint of light viewed by the astronomers has been streaking through space for all those years and has just reached us. The quasar may very well have ceased to exist millions and millions of years ago. Did it? It may take millions and millions of years before we can say. If we wanted to find out more about this quasar or about quasars in general, we could stop someone on a street corner and ask about it, and that person would be free to offer an opinion. But it would be more sensible to ask an astronomer.
Can a whale communicate with another whale? If so, how far can he transmit his message? Would our auto mechanic have an opinion on this matter? Perhaps. And so might our grocer, dentist, banker. But no matter how intelligent these people are, chances are their opinions about whales are not very well informed. The people whose opinions would be valuable would be those who have done some research with whales. (They would tell us that the humpback whales can make a variety of sounds. In addition to clicking noises, they make creaking and ganging and squeaking noises. They've been found to make these sounds for as long as several minutes at a time, at an intensity of 100 to 110 decibels, and for a distance of 25,000 miles.)12
Similar examples could be cited from every field of knowledge: from antique collecting to ethics, from art to criminology. All would support the same view: that by examining the opinions of informed people before making up our minds, we broaden our perspective, see details we might not see by ourselves, and consider facts we would otherwise be unaware of. No one can know everything about everything; there is simply not enough time to learn. Consulting those who have given their special attention to the field of knowledge in question is therefore not a mark of dependence or irresponsibility but of efficiency and good sense.
FORMING SOUND OPINIONS
It's natural for us to form opinions. We are constantly receiving sensory impressions and responding to them, first on the level of feelings, then on the level of thought. Even if we wanted to escape having opinions, we couldn't. nor should we want to. One of the