I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a concept called epistemic humility.
It’s the recognition that our own knowledge is limited — and that other people may have arrived at their conclusions through just as much thoughtful reasoning, lived experience, and careful reflection as we have.
What has my attention is that epistemic humility isn’t really about being less certain.
It’s about being more curious.
I’ve noticed that many of the conversations that leave me feeling dismissed or underestimated don’t actually involve disagreement. They involve an assumption.
The assumption that I haven’t thought deeply about my position.
The assumption that if someone could just explain things correctly, provide one more fact, or point out one more flaw in my reasoning, I would immediately arrive at the “right” conclusion.
And if I’m being fair, I’ve caught myself doing this too.
Not because I think poorly of other people.
Because it’s surprisingly easy to assume that someone who disagrees with me must be missing something that I see.
Sometimes that’s true.
Often it isn’t.
The people I find myself in real conversation with have spent years thinking about the things they care about. They’ve read, researched, listened, wrestled, questioned, changed their minds, and sorted through their own experiences.
Sometimes they know things I don’t know. And sometimes we’ve encountered the same information and still landed somewhere different. Shared information doesn’t guarantee shared conclusions.
The difference is that we’re interpreting it through different life experiences, values, priorities, hopes, fears, and assumptions about how the world works.
We are answering different questions.
We are trying to solve different problems.
And because of that, thoughtful people can look at the same set of facts and arrive at very different conclusions.
One of the practices I’m trying to develop is starting with the assumption that the person across from me has already thought deeply about the opinion they’re sharing.
That doesn’t mean they’re right.
It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
It means I begin from a place of respect and curiosity rather than correction.
It means I stay curious about how they arrived there instead of assuming they simply haven’t considered the alternatives.
The older I get, the less interested I am in convincing people that I’ve thought deeply about my views.
I’m more interested in creating conversations where both people assume the other already has.
That small shift changes the relationship within the conversation.
It changes the questions we ask.
It changes the way disagreement feels.
And it creates the possibility that respect can remain present, even when consensus does not. 🌿
