Not without its dangers.

Doublethink:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies[..]"

1984, George Orwell

Opposed ideas doesn't necessarily mean conflicting ideas.

For example, it's possible to appreciate that in the US people need some means of getting an education in order to get a job while at the same time realizing the demand for quality education far outstrips supply, which when paired with federal loans inflates the cost of education so much that it puts it farther out of reach for people.

That's a problem with a solution that exacerbated the problem while trying to solve it. Processing both doesn't involve telling deliberate lies, it just means the solution is more complex than we'd like to admit.

To add to your point, holding opposing ideas in your mind doesn't mean you accept both ideas as correct and valid and good (as in the Orwell quote). It just means that you can appreciate them and understand some of the points they try to make.

The issue with polarized politics is that it encourages one-mindedness. Instead of trying to understand where your political opponents are coming from, you are encouraged to reject them and their ideas as "the enemy". A very anti-intellectual "Us versus Them" mindset.

> To add to your point, holding opposing ideas in your mind doesn't mean you accept both ideas as correct and valid and good (as in the Orwell quote). It just means that you can appreciate them and understand some of the points they try to make.

If two theses conflict each other at least one of them (perhaps even both) must be wrong. That is basic science. This is also why physicists still try to unify general relativity and quantum physics. So instead of accepting multiple ideas use your mind to

1. create predictions that each of the conflicting theses imply, such that the two theses will do different predictions, which if they can't be observed will convince you that the thesis was wrong.

2. develop an experiment with which you can observe these predictions

3. execute the experiment

> If two theses conflict each other at least one of them (perhaps even both) must be wrong.

This is too simplistic. They can be partially right as well as partially wrong. Is light a wave or a particle? Well, it depends.

Two opposing half-truths form a paradox. While some paradoxes can be resolved, by finding a deeper theory that unifies them, some cannot. To draw an example from the political realm -- more relevant to this discussion -- here are two truths:

(1) We are all in this together.

(2) Each person is responsible for their own life.

These are both true, but conflict. And I do not think there will ever be a final resolution of this paradox. In some situations, the first principle is more important; in others, the second. Hashing out which is which is a never-ending debate, and a critically important one.

> > If two theses conflict each other at least one of them (perhaps even both) must be wrong.

> This is too simplistic. They can be partially right as well as partially wrong. Is light a wave or a particle? Well, it depends.

In this case both statements (light is a wave and light is a particle) are simply wrong and as current scientific matters stand the description given by quantum physics seems to be the correct one (at least for about 70 years no experiment could be given that has disproved it).

In this context opposition is not necessarily conflict.

Are two sides of a bridge opposing each other or conflicting with each other?

In a client-server security model the client usually wants as much as it can take and the server wants to provide as little as it has to. Are these opposed, or in conflict?

> In this context opposition is not necessarily conflict.

Than it's not an opposition.

> In a client-server security model the client usually wants as much as it can take and the server wants to provide as little as it has to. Are these opposed, or in conflict?

Now you create a malicious client which will pretent it has little, say, computational power or network capacity. So the server will have to do lots of work. Voila - a good beginning for a DoS attack. :-)

So, yes, these goals are in conflict and such an attack is a falsification of the soundness of your security model.

I apologize if I'm incorrect, but I believe English is not your first language. There is a difference between opposition and conflict. It's a bit subtle but it's very important in this context.

When you say a "malicious client" you are misunderstanding the purpose of my analogy. A malicious client would be "the enemy". I'm talking about a client that is interested with engaging with the service, not just shutting it down. The client may like to have all the information and resources the server has available to it, (for example, perhaps a facebook user might want to see when people look at their photos, not just like/comment) but the server needs to consider the experience of all the clients and users, not just the one. So there is opposition (but not conflict!) between the two. The client will not be allowed to have this information, even though the server has it. Conflict would be manifested by the user abandoning the service (or attacking it, as in your example) because of this incompatible or insurmountable difference.

This is only true if you can be sure of your starting axioms, which is not the case in social organization. Experiments simply add specific metrics to your set of axioms.

It all comes down to heuristics, and differing heuristics are not mutually exclusive.

I don't know why your answer was downvoted. Your point is a sane approach to handling opposing/conflicting ideas. Though I didn't read the Original quote as accepting opposing/conflicting ideas.

I believe it was originally down-voted for making the assumption that science could solve politics (we're talking opinions, not facts, so you cannot rigourously apply the scientific method).

The comment also fell for the trap of falsely equating opposition with conflict.

As a thought experiment, take the issue of abortion. GP is telling me that certainly either "Abortions should be allowed because of the mother's rights" or "Abortions should not be allowed because of the unborn child's rights" is WRONG. Tell me how anyone could possibly create an "experiment" which would result in a meaningful answer. How would you measure the morality and goodness of the event in a way that everyone could agree upon? Do you see the problem?

> As a thought experiment, take the issue of abortion. GP is telling me that certainly either "Abortions should be allowed because of the mother's rights" or "Abortions should not be allowed because of the unborn child's rights" is WRONG. Tell me how anyone could possibly create an "experiment" which would result in a meaningful answer. How would you measure the morality and goodness of the event in a way that everyone could agree upon? Do you see the problem?

The problem here is that biological and neurological research has a long way to go to resolve the question after what week of pregnancy what level of consciousness or intellectual capacity is there. So at the moment there is no way to answer this question in an acceptable way.

No, the problem is that they are "should" questions, and thus experiments can't answer them at all. Now, if you assume a moral framework in which a certain combination of consciousness or intellectual capacity on the part of the mother makes her rights paramount (or one which does so for the child, or one which does some calculus on the relative levels of those traits between the mother and the child to determine which is paramount) then you can reduce this to a fact question that is conceivably resolvable by experiment (and, thus, leave only the problem that you mention), but I would assert that there is no such consensus moral framework, so you've actually identified the easy problem with resolving the conflict, while ignoring the fundamental and intractable one.

This is a fruitful example: the vast majority of those opposed to abortion will concede that a zygote has no conciousness or intellectual capacity, yet most of them will nonetheless insist on the zygote's personhood and right to life.

Exactly.

I think we use different definitions of "opposed ideas".

To keep two opposed ideas in mind should be done with the aim of solving contradictions.

If you can distill a better abstraction you are solving the contradiction and you finish with only one idea.

It is more than that. There needn't even be a contradiction, many of the most contentious issues of the day have different base axioms supporting their arguments and different levels of credibility assigned to empirical evidence. Further part of the objective is developing empathy for those holding alternate positions. Resolving conflict often requires taking into considering irrational or wrong beliefs (from one's own perspective) but is nevertheless still necessary.

In fact, a big part of the current disagreements is holding oneself oblivious to the different paradigms held by those with opposing views. If you presume they are working from the same assumptions, then of course the only motivation for their views must be malice or some other vice. But that is rarely the case.

Could awareness of the tension between the two be the difference between doublethink and intelligence, as defined by GP?

I love the irony in following the first quote by holding both quotes in my mind, and considering that there is some wisdom to both.

I think you are right. I think both quotes speak about the same.

The GP is talking about the ability to think and find the truth, Orwell is talking about using the same skill to lie (to oneself and the others).

In this context, "hold" likely does not mean "accepting". I read it to mean closer to "consider", which means that one is able to consider two opposing arguments, and understand them to the point that one could articulate the negatives and benefits of each side. That is very much not doublethink.

The difference between Fitzgerald's intelligence and Orwell's doublethink, as I see it, is that Orwell's doublethink is when the conflicting ideas are understood as binary absolutes, held to exactly represent reality, while Fitzgerald's intelligence is when the conflicting ideas are understood as fuzzy approximations held to convey something important about the world without exactly representing it.

And, going further, I think the root of the danger found in Orwell's doublethink lies even lower -- the danger starts with holding even one idea as a binary absolute that perfectly reflects the real world. Ideas, particularly ideas which can be reduced to language, are more like Platonic forms, which elements of the natural world might fuzzily reflect but will never perfectly embody.

Doublethink was a satire/parody of communist "dialectical materialism" - in turn a development of Hegelian dialectics and finally of Heraclitus. Orwell is embarassingly simpleminded in accounting for this, and it's a crying shame he wasn't acquainted with Whitehead and Bergson and other thinkers that were fully aware that reality is process rather than essence.

Bonus: Heraclitus on Wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heraclitus

Boy, this describes some people I've worked with to a T.

There's an esr version of this I enjoy too: "The single most important kind of intelligence is the ability to see past your own strongly-held preconceptions and your tribe's conventional wisdom and engage reality as it actually is and facts as they actually are."

That sounds like the definition of doublethink in Orwell's 1984.

It does sound like it on the surface, but doublethink was about the ability to think something was both true and false. What Fitzgerald was more likely getting at was the ability to assess and appreciate different choices and/or ideologies simultaneously.

OTOH if you've reached a point where you are ready to accept both 'A' and 'not A', you need to go back and re-examine your premises/assumptions (sort of a real life example of reductio ad absurdum). Related example: accepting 'the left is delusional and corrupt' and 'the right is delusional and corrupt' leads one to re-examine the validity and usefulness of this whole left-right spectrum of political thought.

I take the original "Hold in mind" to mean "consider, in detail", and it works better. Perhaps in line with "seek first to understand".

I'm inclined to agree with this interpretation.

There's a difference between considering A and not A, and accepting A and not A. In formal logic, one or the other statement must be true. The point being made is that we should refrain from choosing the true statement until we've taken the time to consider both on their own merits.

Mixing reality and absolute statements seems like a recipe for falsehood.

Probabilities work much better. "I'm 50% certain of A and 50% of not-A", which means complete ignorance. A "80% A" means you have an opinion, but you acknowledge a 20% possiblity of being wrong. If anybody claims "100% sure of something", it is an obvious sign of idiocy.

The purpose of ideal statements is to expose some facet of reality in isolation so that it can be understood. Where people get tripped up is in closing the loop and recognizing that the ideal is never present in isolation. It shows when they ignore details that might make their ideal less valid. They're still useful, though.

With respect, you seem to be saying that probabilities work better than absolutes, and yet your final sentence seems to be an absolute.

I am 100% sure that anything measurable exists.

Something something Sith, something something absolutes :)

On the other hand, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle#Critici...

The competing positions in most arguments, especially political arguments, are not of the form 'A or Not A.' Including your own example.

Your related example is not an example of A and not A!

> "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Opposed ideas does not always mean that both ideas have the same level of validity.

Some ideas are provably wrong. "Depolarizing" allowed climate change denial and anti-vaxxers, for example, to gain a following because we didn't stamp them out quickly and strongly.