Fake Contradictory Opinions
It's an opinion that sounds unreasonable with insufficient context, but depending on a conditional or added context, makes sense. I've liked documenting these as they bring out nuances that are often missed by human brains which are fond of rigidly identifying with labels or fixed arrangements.
Here are a few fake contradictory opinions:
- In Taleb's book, Skin In The Game:
I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will.
- In some contexts, I'd say breakfast is overhyped and inessential. In others, I'd also say breakfast is the best meal of the day, without it being a contradiction.
- Traditionally, many programmers often pick a side between Vim and Emacs. I manage to aggravate most of these people because I use Emacs with Vim keymaps, and assert that Emacs, in fact, is a superior Vim.
- To stir this pot more, I also don't particularly like Emacs and think that most people are better off not using it over mainstream IDEs. I use Emacs for specific reasons.
- My brother thinks homoeopathy is fraudulent, but potentially a net positive.
- William Irvine, philosopher and advocate of Stoicism talks about how Stoics want to oppose negative emotions. Ironically, his recommended way to do this is to intentionally think negative thoughts:
A Stoic will “deal with” the things he can’t control not by worrying about them but by engaging in what I call negative visualization: he will spend time contemplating the bad things that can happen to him. He might, for example, allow himself to have a flickering thought about how much worse his life would be if he lost a loved one or friend.
It's seemingly contradictory, but makes perfect sense.
- I love coffee, but don't like caffeine.