Somewhat belatedly, I’ve come upon this essay in which a “libertarian economist retracts a swipe at the left—after discovering that our political leanings leave us more biased than we think.” It presents a problem for anyone trying to communicate ideas that lack popular support: we are all “my-side biased,” tending to block out arguments and evidence that we know (or even suspect) will threaten any of our cherished convictions. How to overcome humanity’s natural ideological defense mechanisms?

Plato’s Socrates tried to do it by taking his interlocutors by surprise. First, get them to acknowledge all the key facts of a particular matter in isolation, in a way that does not present an obvious ideological threat, and only then tie them logically together so that the interlocutor cannot help but realize that his original presumption must be wrong. Hard to do.

An even tougher challenge is trying to minimize our own my-side bias so that we are not so thick-headed when one of our own convictions is contradicted by reality. Reading articles like the above from time to time no doubt helps.