> If you have opinions you're reluctant to share among peers without wording it carefully, and you've spent a lot of time thinking very carefully about the topic, then there's a pretty good chance you're an interesting person to know.
Though we won't be able to make good on the bet, I would confidently wager a supermajority of people who fit that criteria are not particularly interesting to you, or any given individual for that matter.
In my experience, most people who spend a long time thinking about their controversial beliefs aren't especially insightful or interesting to those who disagree with them. For low hanging fruit we can just look at politics. But even beyond that, the universe of controversial ideas is so vast that it's unlikely a person's given muse will be compelling or insightful to other people.
Original thinking tends to be offensive. If you're right, you often can't go around saying you're right. You have to keep your thoughts to yourself. And if you have a scientific mind, you want to seek truths wherever they are.
If you get in the habit of actively trying to seek out radioactive truths, you'll stumble on some interesting ideas eventually. And I'd love to know anyone who genuinely makes it a habit (as opposed to doing it for social signaling).
You're right that the majority of people wouldn't be interested, because most people have deeply-held beliefs. Getting at original ideas requires a fluidity that often runs against natural instincts.
"I have known entirely sincere people who thought they were a Seeker of Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. And that was the end of the search; when they found that which they knew to be the Truth, they sought no further. They spent the rest of their life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect their Truth from the weather.
If they were seeking after political Truth, they found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men on earth; if they were seeking after the Only True Religion, they found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when they found the Truth, they sought no further; but from that day forth, with their soldering-iron in one hand and their bludgeon in the other, they tinkered its leaks, and argued with objectors."
Yeah, I agree with the idea that if you trudge through radioactive ideas you'll find some diamonds in the rough. But you'll have to really dig through some radioactive crap for it; a lot of what's outside the Overton Window is there for a reason. The fashions of an era aren't entirely arbitrary.
Though we won't be able to make good on the bet, I would confidently wager a supermajority of people who fit that criteria are not particularly interesting to you, or any given individual for that matter.
In my experience, most people who spend a long time thinking about their controversial beliefs aren't especially insightful or interesting to those who disagree with them. For low hanging fruit we can just look at politics. But even beyond that, the universe of controversial ideas is so vast that it's unlikely a person's given muse will be compelling or insightful to other people.