The idea that rational, well-meaning people never contradict themselves is a misunderstanding of logic, evidence, and honesty.
We are limited and language is limited. It is easy to say two things that seem contradictory yet are nevertheless true for their original speaking purpose.
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An artificial prohibition against that kind of freeform contradiction actually impedes honesty, rationality, and evidence gathering and analysis.
Many things even in science seem contradictory, sometimes even impossible. Yet there they are.
We call these "paradoxes" or in mathematics "pathologies," and creative people know that they are often hugely valuable. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Albert Einstein was referring to the same trouble when he - to many people somewhat enigmatically, and I will get to that in a moment - wrote "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Zeno's paradox of the arrow is an incredibly good point. Gaslighting about it does nothing useful; the solution is not to dismiss it, but to discover calculus. Fractal math and chaos math and Newtonian physics and Darwinian evolution and so many other branches of knowledge suffered from the disease of social prohibition against apparent contradiction.
It is the groupish, conformist, overly proper mentality that gets in the way of seeing such truths when they appear, or that results in inordinate backlash when trying to get a new thought or observation accepted.
This is one reason that self-testifying in court is so often a bad idea: juries and seemingly the court system and society in general fail to understand that contradiction is often healthy.
With a friend, I was just watching the series The Girl from Plainville and the documentary it was based on, I Love You, Now Die. In it, Michelle Carter does not testify in court because that would probably be a bad idea. But why? Shouldn't an informed, rational court system allow self-testimony in a way that is not biased against natural, healthy kinds of contradiction? Shouldn't it especially remove such biases in disputes where unhealthy kinds of contradiction could be so important to see in sharp relief?
We should know the difference, shouldn't we? But can we figure out the difference by closing our eyes or using a brutally simple filter like "contradicting yourself shows you're stupid or dishonest"?
That criminal case isn't the reason for my post, nor is the article I'm referencing. They are simply two applications of a big idea that's too often overlooked, yet relevant in daily life and many social issues. It can help solve big problems when we see more clearly.
Often that means we feel free to make two observations that seem to be in conflict with each other.
The irony is that this is often more honest, not less, and that's why it's so valuable to take the risk and let people take the risk.
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Prompted by this article: "The Role of Contradictions in Creativity | Psychology Today"
