i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how difficult it is for me to form an opinion … on pretty much anything.

why is forming an opinion so difficult?

to me, people who are opinionated are either really dumb or really smart. the dumb people have unfounded opinions and the smart people have reasoning to back up what they believe. i suppose the reason i have such a hard time forming an opinion is because i don’t want to be in the dumb category and my standards for how much back up I should have is really high.

i also think if you’re going to have an opinion, you should be able to debate it. and in order to be able to properly debate your opinion, you’re probably going to go through a stage where you look dumb since you have no idea what counter arguments are going to be thrown back at you. debating also helps isolate what facts/philosophies you need to work out in order to have a valid opinion.

so one of my new goals for personal development is to form an opinion by lowering what amount of “research” i think is required to back it up and by increasing the amount of debate on my opinion.

i’d be interested in hearing what people think about forming opinions in general.