How do you engage effectively across deep disagreement without shutting down the conversation?
This week on If/Then, we’re sharing an episode from our colleagues at Stanford Legal, the podcast from Stanford Law School that looks at the cases, questions, and conflicts shaping public life.
In a world where confidence is rewarded and humility can feel like a liability, Stanford Law professor Robert MacCoun argues for something radical: fewer unwavering opinions, more critical reflection, and a better way to disagree. On Stanford Legal, MacCoun joins co-hosts Pam Karlan and Diego Zambrano for a conversation about how “habits of mind” borrowed from science can help citizens, lawyers, and policymakers think more clearly, listen more carefully, and build better public debate around difficult questions that don’t have easy answers.
Trained as a social psychologist, MacCoun's work sits at the intersection of law, science, and public policy, with decades of research on decision-making, bias, and the social dynamics that shape how evidence is interpreted. In the episode, he draws on his most recent book, Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense, co-authored with Nobel Prize–winning physicist Saul Perlmutter and philosopher John Campbell, to explain why probabilistic thinking, intellectual humility, and what he calls an “opinion diet” are essential tools for modern civic life.
Related Content:
Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:23 The course, the book, & what motivated it
00:04:06 Habits of mind for better decision-making
00:06:20 Probabilistic thinking and intellectual humility
00:09:57 An “opinion diet”
00:12:16 Reasonable doubt, community, & collective judgment
00:14:13 Scientific optimism and the problem of cynicism
00:17:31 Why trust in science has eroded
00:20:10 Law, science, & the value of procedure
00:22:50 Steel-manning the other side
00:24:58 Public policy as provisional problem-solving
00:30:07 Deliberative democracy and informed public debate
00:32:03 Conclusion
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