Well Versed or Biased
I have gotten way too little sleep last night to write this as eloquently as I want to but I figured I'll start it now and can always adjust it tomorrow. So please don't get mad at me if it's not so well-put.
I have decided that there's a big difference between people who are Well Versed in a subject and those who are simply biased. There are people who already hold a specific belief and read anything and everything that backs up their opinion and nothing on the opposing side. I find these people to be more annoying to talk to than the ones who haven't read at all. At least with completely uninformed people I can tell myself that they don't care enough about the issue to read up on it and have just formulated opinions with no facts to back them up. It's easy for me to not get into a conversation with such a person.
A person who has only read books/articles/papers that agree with his/her point of view is a totally different kind of fighter. This person has facts and refuses to consider the possibility that the things s/he considers facts might be biased but claims anything on the other side of the issue is biased or distorted. Such a person is incredibly frustrating to deal with and completely pointless to talk to. The only reason I would like to talk to someone who disagrees with me is because I'd be interested in their way of thinking or the information they might have interpreted differenly than I did. This allows me to see the world from different angles and thus allows me to grow. But if the person I am talking to is just there to prove their point and is completely closed to mine, it makes the conversation very argumentative and my main goal is never to argue or to convince someone of my way. It's simply to understand their way. For this, I need to be open to the possibility of seeing the world from their eyes. And they need to be open to the same. If they completely refuse to listen to or read any of the opposing thoughts, I can only assume they are parroting points from their reading, not ideas they have actually developed through thought and comparison of counter positions on issues.
Talking to someone who's simply repeating other people's words is useless to me, I might as well read that person's words (and get the word from the original source). I prefer to deal with people who are well versed and spent time thinking where they stand on an issue and why.
