Question

Hello Michi, and have a good week!
In several places I’ve heard you say that if you arrive at a position on something, then the opposing position that contradicts it stems from various biases. For example, if it is forbidden to leave Gaza, then someone who says (for security reasons) that it is good to leave Gaza is driven by biases. But I would like to suggest a different explanation: every person is built differently, and assigns different probabilities than other people to various basic assumptions. For example, one person can claim that the proposition “there is no reason for everything” is a relatively plausible claim, while another person can claim that it is obviously implausible. Or another example: one person can claim that the proposition “we will be able to attack in Gaza even two months after a hostage deal, even if we signed with Hamas that we would not attack for 10 years, since we can always find some pretext for an attack, and there is no need to fear that the world will stop us” is a plausible claim, while another will argue that it is not.
What I want to claim is that the plausibility of such propositions, and the differences in these plausibility judgments between people, can stem from differences in basic intuitions, and not necessarily from biases and brainwashing. I am speaking about theoretical people, of course, since as you say all the time, our discourse is full of biases on both sides and almost nobody listens to anybody else. I’m talking about people who hear positions, weigh them seriously, relate seriously to all the positions, and in the end express a sincere and internal position—not something merely said outwardly.
 
In such a situation, it is possible that the difference in positions does not stem from biases, but simply from a different intuitive structure that assigns different probabilities to different assumptions/propositions. What I’m saying reminds me a bit of what you said in one of the series about the different religions: it is possible that a Christian will consider Judaism and a Jew will consider Christianity, and the Christian will reach the conclusion that Christianity is true, while the Jew will reach the conclusion that Judaism is true. It is not certain that one of them is biased; it could be that this is simply where both of their intuitions lead them.
What do you think about these issues and about my argument in favor of this kind of pluralism of positions? (A clarification: I am not claiming that there is no one truth, but that there are people who simply cannot arrive at that truth, and not because of biases, but because of a different intuition—just as a blind person cannot see, and not because of biases).