The thing is, there’s a valid place for “playing devil’s advocate,” in the process of testing an argument to decide if it’s really good.

Ideally, of course, it happens inside your own mind, before you’re actually arguing with anyone.

It’s just… sometimes that arena isn’t quite enough.

For instance. Sometimes an opinion feels right to me, instinctively. And I haven’t yet put into words why it feels right, but I think I probably do have a good subconscious reason for it, I just have to figure it out.

So I start trying to articulate the feeling.

I might say to myself, “We should individually take steps to try and reduce the harm in societal problems…. even when the ideal solution would be for someone much more powerful than us to stop being greedy.”

And another part of my mind could say, “Give me an example.”

And I could reply, “Okay, for instance, we should always give food service workers a good tip, even if the better solution would be for their bosses to pay them enough that they don’t need tips. Because that’s not going to happen anytime soon, and they still need to survive in the meantime.”

And then the devil’s advocate part of my mind might say: “But your opinion is inconsistent. Because look at another example of the same thing. You claim to believe that you and your coworkers shouldn’t agree to take on more work than you can comfortably do, because the better solution would be for your bosses to hire enough people instead of expecting you to do that.”

And I’m like “…Yes, true, I do believe that.”

And then the devil’s advocate goes, “But that’s not going to happen anytime soon, either! So, employees working extra hours when they don’t want to is the same sort of individual harm-reduction as customers tipping food service workers. Why do you support one and discourage the other?”

And then the rest of my mind could then argue back, and the devil’s advocate could keep poking at those arguments. I could go like:

“If we keep agreeing to extra work, it normalizes that, and the bosses will think it’s okay to keep expecting everyone to do that instead of hiring enough people.”

“Yeah, exact same deal as when you keep tipping the food service workers instead of demanding that the bosses pay them enough.”

“Me demanding that their bosses pay them enough wouldn’t accomplish anything, though.”

“Same deal for your own bosses.”

“There’s a difference between my job and a food service job.”

“Yeah your job is in healthcare, and when there aren’t enough people to do the work, patients literally don’t get treatment. If anything, it makes individual harm reduction a MORE urgent need.”

“If we take on more work than we can handle, we’ll make mistakes from exhaustion.”

“If you don’t take on that work, it won’t get done, and most of the time that’s even worse than getting done with occasional mistakes.”

“Taking on extra work is harder and more unpleasant than giving big tips.”

“Work and money are the same thing, numbnuts. All money is generated from someone’s labor. Taking on extra work is how you get enough extra money to afford the big tips.”

And so on.

And maybe, with the help of the devil’s advocate testing the weak points in my arguments, maybe I eventually come up with an argument that isn’t weak! Maybe I do eventually find a good solid argument, one that sufficiently explains why my viewpoints make intuitive sense to me and don’t feel contradictory.

But maybe I can’t. Maybe the devil’s advocate points out holes in every argument I can think of!

Maybe I start to wonder whether I really am trying to articulate and put into words why a belief makes sense to me… or whether, maybe, I’m just trying to rationalize a belief that doesn’t make real sense.

So, then maybe I go talk to other people who I’ve seen discussing these issues before.

But there’s the problem.

When I bring up my concern about whether two beliefs contradict each other…. those people, who’ve had this sort of debate on the topic before, will probably bring up some of the same points that came up in my own internal argument.

And when I respond by pointing out the flaws that the devil’s-advocate part of my mind saw in them– it’s going to come across as me taking that side.

And it likely won’t even get to the point of exploring new arguments that might be better! It probably won’t even last through as many rounds of debate as I went through in my head, before it all just ends in frustration toward me:

“What’s your problem? You say you support tipping, and that you oppose working excessive overtime– but you seem to always have a prepared argument against those beliefs! Clearly you’re not even asking in good faith. This is why we don’t trust people playing ‘devil’s advocate.’ Go away, troll.”

And there’s no way I can convince them that no, I AM asking in good faith, I very, very much WANT to find a way to justify believing the things that feel instinctively right to me–

and the reason I keep making arguments against them, is because I genuinely want my justification to be a real justification– a reason that actually justifies my beliefs– and not a cardboard cutout rationale that just gives me an excuse to say I believe them!

There are many such debates going on in my mind. On many of them I am just in a holding pattern, tentatively sticking with my gut feeling despite my doubts, because I have gone as far as I can go with my own internal debate team.

But all of them would get me nothing but a useless fight, if I brought them up with a devil’s advocate approach in a space with other people.

I think probably we aren’t expected to care this much about whether our beliefs make sense.