The Wikipedia Test

The "illusion of explanatory depth" confuses us into thinking we understand things at a deeper level than we really do. Simple stuff like "How does a tiolet work" or "How does a bicycle work" tends to stump us when we're asked specific questions about the mechanisms. Same goes for political topics and things on the news.

A decent test of your understanding is to look up the Wikipedia (or good ole' encyclopedia) entry for a topic that you have strong opinions about, and see if there's anything that's mind-bogglingly surprising to you. If you're finding a lot of surprises, and they seem to check out (check references! The Wikipedia is fallible!), then you probably didn't understand the topic as well as you thought.

I remember reading the Dakota Access pipeline Wikipedia page and being floored by the extent to which the builders had received voluntary easements. Apparently, to a very large number of people whose properties were affected, this was a pretty unobjectionable project (given appropriate compensation). I wish the people waxing wroth on my Facebook feed would have gone through this exercise. It might not have made them "pro-pipeline", but it would have made them re-think whether this was the world's greatest injustice.

Or do "the Google test". Simply look up the first few Google hits. Maybe search for "best arguments for/against..." Again, if there are a lot of surprises here, consider that maybe you need to do some reading, because you didn't understand your topic so well after all. I recently found that it was very easy to get the canonical list of supposed "non-neutrality" transgressions by internet service providers. I also found that this list completely falls apart when you look at the examples in any detail.

Maybe I'm mistaken about these topics. But the exercise of doing some research (even cursory research) on the topic that excites you is bound to yield some interesting surprises. Pick something that's been in the news, something you think you understand well, and start digging.