Why do people really disagree, if not over the facts?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches that “people never disagree because of missing information. They disagreed because they had different values.” For a long time this was hidden, because convincing arguments were scarce and it looked as if whoever argued best had the facts on his side.
AI exposes it. Now every opinion can be backed by endless, polished reasoning, and still people disagree. “AI exposes something that was mostly hidden before”: the argument was never really the cause of the disagreement.
That, he says, leads to the question the new generation will ask: “Who gave anyone the authority to decide?” When arguments no longer settle anything, people are pushed past them to the deeper question of what is true and who has the right to say so.
Related concepts: Thinking · Relationships
In A Soul at Peace: When Everyone Can Win an Argument: Truth in the Generation Before the Messiah
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
People disagree because of different values, not missing information.
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the mind is not an independent judge but a “lawyer” whose job is to justify what the heart has already decided.
Deepest human truth
When persuasion is everywhere, the question becomes who has the authority to decide.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Technology, Noise, and Human Identity · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz