Why 'The War of Ideas' is important.

If you ever open Twitter or watch any news channel anywhere in the world, you’ll notice a surprising divide lurking on almost every page or post—especially around hot topics where people are trying to share their opinions.

Twitter often feels like a warzone of ideas (or a bar where everyone is yelling at everyone else). It’s full of trolls, personal attacks, and threats. And all of this happens simply because people disagree with each other on a topic—even something as trivial as liking a certain idea or a celebrity.

Sometimes it feels like if you gathered everyone in one place and let them confront each other in person, it would turn into chaos—almost like the revolution at the end of the Movie Joker.

Even as simple as uploading a photo on Instagram sometimes have bad consequences. I mean if you're in US or Europe and you post a photo of a melting iceberg, you'll have some conservative trolls.

On News Channels we see Constant debate about this and every topic we could find.

The World is divided, and Specially in the Modern world because of the advent of free speech and free expression which have so many positive transformations by the way throughout the Human Progress.

War of Ideas is Possible in the Modern World

It is Possible in the 21st century to have War of Ideas , but that was not the case throughout the history.., Most of the world was governed by monarchies and religion and they don't really like to listen to contrasting opinions a lot.

In fact, critical thinking would be the last thing that any dogmatic belief or a 'Faith' can have because that is the most corrosive thing you can have for the 'Questionable Stories' you have invented in order to control and remain a dominant belief among an extremely large population.

So Dogmatic beliefs have always feared Reason and Questioning against the factual Credibility of their version of stories about the Universe. So, for almost all of history what we have is, if you have certain opinion about Something you always have to express it in a way so that the Religion or the Monarch of that local Nation or Territory don't get Offended. Also make sure you do not question anything "Unquestionable", so that you do not end up getting socially discarded or publicly executed the Next day on the Streets.

This was the freedom of expression throughout the Human History, you can Question anything but there are 'EXCEPTIONS' , far too many exceptions in fact...

Disagreement and 'the War of Ideas' is Important

We differ in ideas all the time; it’s inevitable that you’ll disagree on at least ten topics if you start asking questions carefully to literally anyone—your boss, friend, partner, or anyone else (especially your partner).

We all have different experiences, different knowledge, different skills, and different perspectives on virtually every issue in the world. Our minds are built in such a way that we easily believe things that have been indoctrinated into us for a long time. Eventually, those beliefs become strong biases, and we almost fight to the death to oppose anyone who disagrees with them.

And that’s where the scientific way of thinking comes in. Science recognized this pattern of human behavior.

Many great thinkers of the Enlightenment era realized that the human mind is not perfectly rational. We are subject to all sorts of biases and cognitive shortcomings that inevitably affect how we try to understand the universe and make judgments about it. So science developed thought processes such as empiricism, rationalism, and skepticism.

Empiricism says that true knowledge can only be acquired by going out and observing and measuring the universe. That’s what we call empirical evidence. In other words, you cannot deduce factual information about the universe just by thinking about it or relying on vague “insights.”

Then comes skepticism, which says that in order to understand the truths of the universe, we should become our own theory’s harshest critics—because we are the easiest person to fool. By critically analyzing what we think is the best idea, we develop better theories or improve our existing beliefs. It is inevitable that we will make inaccuracies when trying to form assumptions about the universe. As Professor Brian Cox brilliantly put it, “There is no absolute truth in science. Every idea can be replaced or modified if sufficient evidence contradicts the preceding theory.” As Carl Sagan famously said,

That is why it’s important that we start listening to contrasting opinions and remain open to new possibilities—at least to some degree. In other words, you don’t have to be 100% certain about anything. There should always be room for doubt; you can assign 5–10% uncertainty to your conclusions, just like scientific conclusions do. At the very least, we should avoid being overly certain about any idea and keep ourselves open-minded, no matter how experienced or professional we become in our fields.

And we should always keep learning new things, even from people who disagree with us in almost every area. There is always a possibility that they know something we don’t.