Is That Your True Rejection

It’s a rather convoluted argument about his rationale for libertarianism (not to be confused with Libertarianism portrayed in mass media) but I found this part particularly interesting:

There’s a technique we use in our local rationalist cluster called “Is That Your True Rejection?”, and it works like this: Before you stake your argument on a point, ask yourself in advance what you would say if that point were decisively refuted. Would you relinquish your previous conclusion? Would you actually change your mind? If not, maybe that point isn’t really the key issue.

If that wasn’t clear, this should straighten it out:

It is, in our patois, “logically rude,” to ask someone else to painstakingly refute points you don’t really care about yourself. Imagine someone went to all the trouble to look up references and demonstrate to you that those traits were 90% hereditary, and then you turned around and said that you didn’t care.

I try to be as open-minded as I can be but it is possible that I hold beliefs I can’t—or refuse to—relinquish because of my ego or pride. Then I guess the first step to be genuinely open-minded is to recognize that you, just like everyone else, is imperfect.