The title of this post may seem strange to some readers, given that I have some contrarian views – most notably the claim that the Fed caused the 2008 recession with tight monetary policy.
When I say don’t be a contrarian, I mean don’t be someone whose entire identity consists of contrariness. Don’t be someone who remarks, “The elites say X, therefore I have to look for evidence that ‘not X’ is true.” Guess what, it’s almost always possible to find at least it some prove that not X is true; that makes it unwise to believe that not X is true.
Instead, I would suggest that the best way to respond to the claim that X is true is to look for all kinds of evidence about X, both supportive and contradictory. In most cases you will find that the elites are right; X is really true. The moon landing wasn’t fake. Oswald killed JFK.
So you must at least be prepared to entertain opposing views. But don’t be a contrarian. Don’t adopt contrarianism as an identity, like someone might be a Cubs fan or a Yankee fan who supports his team.
This post was motivated by a Axios article which contained this tweet:
Imagine an expert starting his career with a bold contrarian claim and gaining a degree of fame. Perhaps their initially bold claim will actually turn out to be true. Over time, the expert may come to see himself as contrarian and feel pressure from his audience to make more and more contrarian shots. It is at this point that the most important mistake is made: when someone changes from someone with a certain contrarian view to someone whose stocks and trading are contrarian.
And this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Other experts may follow the same general career path. In the battle for readers, experts are pressured to make increasingly sharper recordings in order to stand out from the crowd. This competition can only end in one place, dipping your toes into the most taboo political opinions of all. Just as all political debates eventually make the Nazi comparison, descents into contrarianism will ultimately mitigate Nazi crimes.
(Or, if the contrarian pundit is on the left, they end up excusing communist crimes.)