The trouble with being moderate

Extreme views are, by their nature, pretty rare. So much so that it can be surprising when an extreme view turns out to be right, or when the goalposts move such that the sensible view seems extreme. Climate science and evolution both have this problem; for political reasons there are two popular viewpoints, but placing them at equal but opposite extremes severely misrepresents reality. However, there are many other topics without clear answers, and where varying degrees of moderation are valid.

The difficult thing about this is that we seem to disagree proportionally to the difference between our views. So let's say you believe strongly in social welfare programs, and someone else tells you they believe that the poor are poor for a reason and we shouldn't encourage them. In that conversation, you'd probably speak up and tell them that you think they're wrong. But what if you believe that social welfare is widely abused and in many cases is a waste of money? Now their view is still different, but much closer to your own. Do you speak up? Maybe it doesn't seem worth it for a minor disagreement.

The result is that, especially on the internet, you tend to hear big disagreements more than little ones. The bar for someone to bother to speak up is harder to clear when you only disagree a bit. Unfortunately, this means more moderate views tend to be under-represented, because moderates disagree less strongly. Worse still, it means that most disagreements aren't very useful, because the opinion of someone who disagrees with you on everything is less relevant than someone who agrees with you on most things except for one.

A related problem is that it's easy to conflate the strength of a belief with its extremeness. It's certainly true that if you hold an extreme belief you should probably believe it strongly; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. But the converse isn't true: something you believe strongly isn't always extreme. It is possible, even likely, that the right answer in many situations is unextreme. In those cases, what you hold is a strong moderate belief that is every bit worth pushing for as an extreme view.

Which I think answers the proportional disagreement problem too. If you disagree in proportion to the difference between views, moderate voices tend to stay quiet and extreme ones dominate the conversation. On the other hand, if you disagree in proportion to the strength of your belief, disagreements are between those who feel the strongest. That still means extreme views, but hopefully balanced by the larger weight of strongly held moderate views.

It may be that part of the problem with disagreement on the internet is, ironically, not enough disagreement.