But What If Their Side is Actually Wrong?

Six arguments for intelligent bothsidesism - BCB 141

I spend a lot of time talking about workable definitions of political neutrality for media (and also AI.) I usually say something like: you have to treat all sides with respect, no matter who is right or wrong. This means presenting the views of all sides, in a way that someone on that side would consider fair.

People often object to this by saying, ok, but what if one side is actually wrong? Or even evil?

This essay is an argument in favor of intelligent bothsidesism. The potential failure of false balance or bothsidesism is that it encourages equal credence no matter the quality of the arguments. One careful explanation is that bothsidesism means “taking the fact of controversy on an issue to be evidence about the available evidence.”

But I’m aiming for something else. I’m not talking about the virtue of particular arguments so much as how arguments are given and who gets to give them. Ensuring charitable media representation can greatly help with serious problems of politics, conflict, and fairness.

This was the idea behind the famous FCC Fairness Doctrine which required broadcasters to give equal time to political parties, and also the instinct that drives journalists to get quotes from people who disagree on an issue. But both of these techniques are clumsy, imprecise, not up to the task of 21st century politics. In a future essay I’ll explain how I think the pluralist media toolbox should be sharpened. For now, I’ll just give the why — why repeat terrible ideas at all? Here are six reasons why media sources should include excellent arguments for wrong and bad ideas:

1) Diplomacy

A conflict can’t improve without places of meeting between antagonistic parties. Not every media source needs to be neutral territory, but at least some do.

What this really means is that both sides have to keep showing up! This requires representing their views charitably even when disagreeing with them – especially then.

The point is not to represent arguments but people. This means that if enough people believe an idea you have to present it somehow. The corollary is that if too few people hold a view it may do more harm than good to try to include it. But every minority that is included meets on equal terms.

2) Avoiding Stereotyping

One of the tragedies of conflict is that we misperceive and stereotype the other, distorting their actual beliefs. We imagine that our opponents are more extreme than they actually are, and that fringe beliefs are much more common.

For example, take the claim that “conservatives don’t believe in climate change.” This has long been a Red trope, with Trump calling climate change a “hoax.” What Republicans actually believe is more complicated. For a start, it varies by age. As of mid-2024, 79% of Republicans aged 18-29 believe climate change is real and caused at least partly by human activities. The major polarized differences are about what should be done about it: Republicans are much more worried about fewer jobs and higher prices as a result of climate change mitigation.

Similar arguments apply to Blue slogans like “defund the police” or “America is a racist country,” which Red tends to mis-attribute and misunderstand. Going through the process of intelligently articulating a group position forces one to stop making assumptions about what the normal (not extreme) members of that group actually believe.

3) A fairness starting point

If you didn’t know what side of an argument you would eventually end up on, how would you design a media system? Probably you’d want both sides to be treated the same. This is a classic veil-of-ignorance style argument.

While it is true that fairness often requires more than symmetry (for example, in the presence of large power differentials), all definitions of fairness start with some sort of “appropriate impartiality.” Consider equal presentation to be a fair starting point – a statistical prior, if you like.

4) Developing the best argument

Good arguments come from good criticism. “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that,” as John Stuart Mill said. This has become a platitude, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Replying to people who disagree with you is a great way to develop the strongest version of your own argument.

Similarly, beating up on an opponent is most useful if you’re attacking the strongest version of their view. It forces your criticism to be stronger. Even better, if the evidence just doesn’t support their view, it’s more powerful to say that this problem persists in the best possible version of their position.

Of course, you might always be wrong. Intellectual humility is so important to good conflict that it’s taught as a depolarization technique.

5) Calling them evil is bad for you

To begin with, it’s bad for you spiritually. Every religion has both a promise and a commandment of redemption, from Buddhism’s compassion for all beings to Christianity’s turning the other cheek. As Quinn Norton put it in her discussion of Ahimsa, the ancient doctrine of non-harm, “the internet only gets better if we get better.” Call it a de-escalation move.

I’m serious, but maybe you’re skeptical. Some of you are now scoffing at my naivety, or my moral relativity. There’s a much more practical argument, which is that thinking of a group as evil prevents certain ways of seeing. You will miss not only opportunities for redemption but opportunities for victory. One of my favorite passages on politics comes from an essay on agonistic democracy by Chantal Mouffe:

When the opponent is not defined in political but in moral terms, he cannot be envisaged as an adversary but only as an enemy. With the "evil them" no agonistic debate is possible, they must be eradicated. They are usually conceived as the expression of a moral plague; there is therefore no need to try to understand the reasons for their existence and success. This is why moral condemnation often replaces a proper political analysis and the strategy is limited to the building of a “cordon sanitaire” to quarantine the affected sectors.

That “quarantine” often takes the form of trying to suppress evil ideas. I’m not saying that suppressing speech is never necessary, just that it’s almost always a trap. Better to grapple with the reasons people so badly want to speak.

6) Illuminating disagreement

In our most terrible debates—on vaccines, gun control, abortion, authoritarianism or free speech—we often argue past each other, defending conclusions without examining the assumptions underneath. We cannot identify ways forward without clarifying what we are actually fighting about.

There are tools and language for this. A crux is a key idea or belief that, if it was proven wrong, would make someone change their mind. It’s the core fact or value underpinning the higher level position. A double crux is a crux for both sides in an argument – the core of a disagreement. By focusing on finding shared cruxes, discussions can become less about winning and more about understanding. Maybe there is a fact you can both go study to see if the evidence holds up. Or maybe there is a values disagreement that cannot be resolved by any evidence. At least you’ll know where you disagree.

But this – and all the other good things above – can only happen when nuanced views are put in close contact with each other. There is no reason to be nihilistic about the truth: people actually are persuaded by good reasons (even conspiracy theorists). Representing the other side’s view, no matter how foolish or reprehensible, opens up many pathways for increased trust, more accurate perception, superior evidence, clear political strategy, and better conflict.

Quote of the Week

sorry guys, the closest friend i've ever had (barring romantic relationships) doesnt want to be friends anymore bc she thinks i support a literal dictator bc i didnt want to argue w her about politics

- @goblinodds