Understanding other people's opinions

In my opinion attempting to understand someone else's opinion, I mean really giving it a fair chance, is one of the most important abilities for any human being to have.  Much of our lives are spent interacting with other people and we will run into people that don't share the same opinions as us which is where this ability comes in.  I think that the willingness to have an open mind allows you to learn from and get along with others much better.

Although it may not be fair to paint people with a single brush, I've found that there are some who seem to think that they are always right, some people that are willing to discuss and some who will agree with anything.  Although I think that at times it's beneficial to be decisive, people need to do their best to not be closed minded and not think that there is no value in other's opinions.

It's important to remember that people have opinions for a reason, however stupid they may seem to you.  If you honestly step back for a second and think about someone else's opinion you disagree with, you may find that there are certain situations that they would be correct or there may be some things that you actually do agree on.  Finding that common ground and then working at the hidden assumptions and reasoning people have is often enough to turn an argument into a discussion.

The difficult part about this is that our emotions often take over and for best results this procedure requires both people involved in the disagreement to act more rationally.  I think that we often have an emotional reaction and slightly later a rational reaction and it's important that our immediate emotional reaction does not overpower the rational one.  If you can start a sentence with "I think, but I may be wrong" then it shows that you're willing to discuss and I think that the other party will often attempt to match your fairness.

According to my haphazard musings you might believe that if we could all do this all the time we would live in a utopia, holding hands and singing kumbaya.  Maybe that's not too far off the mark, however nobody's perfect.  We can only strive to be a bit better at skills like this day after day and I think it's important to make a concerted effort to understand (and maybe sometimes agree with) other people's opinions.

PS This is the 52nd blog post after starting one year ago to get donations for the Relay for Life. I may continue at the once a week pace or I may not, but it was fun learning about many random things this year.

Why do birds fly in a V formation?

I'll sometimes notice birds flying overhead and like most people that have seen them in a V formation, I've wondered why they fly like that.  Apparently there are a couple different reasons that have been theorized and tested.

The main reason seems to be that when a bird is flapping it generates an upwash and downwash which benefits the bird behind it.  It helps to support the weight of this bird which means it doesn't have to flap as hard and can use less energy.  This can be especially helpful on very long duration flights.  Since the front bird isn't receiving any benefit they will often switch positions midflight.  One study was done that attached heart rate monitors to pelicans and found that the heart rates of the birds in a V formation were lower than when flying alone, which lends some credence to this belief.  I also found a site that challenges the commonly repeated energy savings a bird will get and is an interesting read.

The other benefit of the formation is that it's likely easier to keep visual track of the other birds.  Studies that have taken into account the optimal positions based on energy efficiency and the optimal positions based on birds' blind spots seem to suggest that the birds are not always in the "best" positions.  Some tend toward energy or visual efficiency and some neither, so it's likely that there are other factors at play.  Naturally it's a bit difficult to continuously view a flock over large distances.