Stanford University professor Paul Saffo is a futurist and future forecaster who coined the phrase, “Strong opinions, weakly held.”

I love this idea. One of the biggest problems today is that too many people have strong opinions that are strongly held. Well, maybe the biggest problem is that too many people have incorrect, unsubstantiated, or uninformed strong opinions that are strongly held. And these poorly formulated strong opinions are exactly the kind of thing that gets magnified on social media… they incite interaction that is more likely to become viral by attracting both opposing views, and the attention of equally like minded, strongly held opinions. Strong opinions, weakly held don’t pull as much social media attention, mainly because these aren’t opinions that people need to shout about online.

The power of strong opinions, weakly held is that ‘strong opinions’ allow you to ‘see’ and be passionate about your perspective, while being ‘loosely held’ allows you to take newly found information and adjust or change your strong opinions.

Case in point: Flat Earthers are the perfect example of strong opinions strongly held. Any evidence given to them doesn’t matter, it’s immediately cast as false or contrived by people conspiring against them. And so no matter the proof given to them, their strong opinion of a flat earth stay unchanged.

Imagine if doctors and scientists held such strong opinions? We’d probably still be blood letting with leaches to treat a fever, and not washing our hands before dealing with open wounds, surgery, and childbirth. Progress comes from being able to let go of conventions and norms that keep us stuck in our current frame of thinking.

Nothing wrong with strong opinions, they are just better off loosely held.