How much you know, how sure you are

There are two questions worth asking about anyone who speaks with confidence, and we usually ask only one.

The first is how much they know. The second is how ready they are to change their mind. We tend to treat these as the same question, as if knowledge naturally hardens into certainty and certainty proves the knowledge. They are separate, and putting them side by side sorts people more usefully than either does alone.

Some people know a great deal and hold firm views, and they have earned them. A pilot running through a checklist, an old carpenter who will not use a certain wood for a door, a referee who does not need the replay. Their convictions save time and prevent mistakes, as long as the world they learned in stays the same. When it shifts, the same convictions can keep a whole trade standing still.

Then there are people who know just as much and still ask why. They have done the work, and they have decided to keep the question open. When one of them says something that sounds odd, it is worth slowing down, because the odd idea comes from someone who understands what it is pushing against.

Most of us, on most subjects, know very little. That is not a problem. It gives us a seat that is honest and useful: we can ask good questions, listen properly to the answers, and be glad when they change what we thought. The sign of someone sitting there in good faith is how easily they say they had it wrong.

The last seat gets the most attention now. Little knowledge, firm opinions, no interest in moving. It is loud because certainty without knowledge costs nothing to produce.

Every conversation offers a chair. Most of the time, the one with our name on it is the curious one, and taking it is a choice.