Nearly all controversial issues (i.e., nuclear power, marijuana legalization, and minimum wage increases) have both benefits and drawbacks. Yet our brains resist seeing issues that way.
It’s easy for us to believe that our side is fully right, and therefore that the other side is completely wrong. That’s typically what both our own side and the other is convinced of, and usually, we’re all mistaken!
Since most of us discuss these controversial issues with people who share our perspective, and most of us read sources that seem trustworthy according to our existing world view, we rarely hear the arguments of the other side portrayed by someone we view as credible. This makes it easier to believe that the other side’s beliefs are a consequence of stupidity, ignorance, or evil; as opposed to being caused by differing base values, a different view on the importance of good and bad aspects of a subject, or a different interpretation of the evidence.
Once our brains decide something is beneficial, we find it harder to remember the drawbacks. We may even deny they exist or view anyone who mentions these drawbacks as a rival. Likewise, if we’ve decided something is not beneficial, there may be intense psychological pressure to forget or deny the beneficial aspects. But reality rarely divides good and bad into such neat packages (at least, when it comes to big, controversial policy issues).
Consider some examples of how benefits and drawbacks can exist concurrently:
(1) Nuclear power plants are good in that they can provide large amounts of clean energy. Nuclear power plants are also bad because they are expensive, they sometimes have nuclear meltdowns, and they produce radioactive waste products that have to be safely stored for a very long time. How valuable nuclear power plants are, depends on how important clean energy is to you, relative to how probable and serious you think nuclear meltdowns are, and also how bad you think their radioactive waste is, all in comparison to other options for producing energy.
(2) Restricting gun purchasing is beneficial because people with guns sometimes use them to kill others or themselves, which they might not have achieved without a gun. Restricting gun purchasing is not beneficial because people (in the U.S. anyway) enjoy owning, practicing with, and collecting guns and because people believe (sometimes correctly) that guns provide protection. Also, individual gun ownership could be considered a constitutional right, so not allowing it may weaken other constitutional protections.
(3) Raising the minimum wage is beneficial because it increases the income of the disadvantaged, improving their lives and helping them provide for their families. Raising minimum wage could be bad because, in some cases, it probably increases unemployment (e.g., by preventing certain types of businesses from coming into existence or by triggering downsizing). It likely causes some companies to fail that would have otherwise succeeded.
(4) Legalizing marijuana is beneficial because it reduces arrests for victimless crimes and because marijuana may be helpful in certain medical contexts (e.g., when dealing with chronic pain). Also, many people enjoy using it. But legalizing marijuana is bad because some people develop marijuana dependence (e.g., 9% of users by one estimate: http://bit.ly/1Rwn6FN), use of it may temporarily reduce motivation as well as motor control and working memory (http://bit.ly/2Dr3bxc) especially in new users, it causes paranoid symptoms for some people, and for some small percentage of users, it may trigger psychotic episodes and perhaps (though the causality is very tough to untangle) even increase the chance of schizophrenia (http://n.pr/2DASWWv).
(5) Legalizing prostitution is good because it can make prostitutes safer (e.g., by making it easier for them to report being attacked) and because it can reduce the spread of disease (e.g., by mandating condom use and regular HIV screening). But legalizing prostitution is bad because it may increase the amount of marital infidelity in society, may increase people viewing sexuality in a transactional manner or increase objectification, and may cause more people to enter a field that causes various risks they did not fully anticipate (e.g., violence, psychological effects, health effects).
As exemplified above, controversial issues are bundles of good and bad, and saying you support something should mean that you think on the net the good outweighs the bad.
“Good” things should be thought of as only good on balance, meaning more good than bad once both the good and bad have been fully taken into account. Being good on balance is not the same as uniformly being “good,” despite our brains often forgetting the difference.
You can fully support a policy while still acknowledging that the opposing side is right that it (like most such things) has downsides too. And if someone tells you, they think a policy will have some negative consequences, that doesn’t mean they support the “other” side.
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