Because we're only ever 50% right at best. Either we’re pushing what seems logically correct or what feels morally right — not both at the same time. And we're not even consistent about it — we conveniently shift from prioritizing one to the other based on the argument. And when your side is playing one card, the other side is almost certainly playing the other. See the problem? In a democracy, how can we get the consensus needed to get things done when both sides are always half right and half wrong? That's the recipe for division and that's all we've been cooking. For over two decades.

The difficult truth is that in order to actually be right, we need to be both logically correct and morally right. Or to remove the confusion altogether — our actions need to be justified. "Right" is a subjective term and can mean anything to anyone. Justified means logically correct andmorally acceptable. That might be hard to digest because incredibly, we've never been told to think this way, but just replay some recent arguments out in your head. You're either telling someone they're not making sense while they're telling you you lack morals, or you're telling them they lack morals while they're telling you you're not making any sense. Neither of you are able to justify what you want and yet, neither of you are willing to back down.

The real question, then, is "do you care about true justification or just the appearance of being "right"? It's a fair question because if it doesn't really matter, then why argue with others and tell them they're wrong? If being right doesn't matter, then neither does being wrong. Just vote what you want and don't mislead yourself and everyone else about your "rightness". Now, before defensively insisting (to yourself or anyone else) that you are both logically correct and morally right, take a look at some examples to see how difficult it is to actually be both.

For cancer treatments, if the only goal were to eliminate the cancer and prevent it from ever coming back, there would be many straightforward options: remove more tissue, apply more radiation, use harsher chemotherapy. From a logical standpoint, evaluating those options doesn’t just mean asking whether they kill the tumor, but also weighing survival odds, long-term damage, quality of life, the suffering patients must endure during treatment, and the likelihood of recovery afterward. When all of that is accounted for, the list of viable (logically correct) treatments narrows considerably. And even then, not every remaining viable option can be considered right.

The options become even more limited once we bring morals into the fold. At that point, it’s no longer just about which treatments are viable, but also whether they’re acceptable. Was the patient fully informed about the risks, trade-offs, and long-term consequences before consenting? Are we respecting established waiting lists, or quietly prioritizing some patients over others? And are we imposing costs on the system that are grossly disproportionate to the expected benefit?

In other words, which one of those remaining viable options (logically correct) is even acceptable (morally right)? The more we spend, the more health insurance costs go up for everybody. If we want to spend our own money to add 6 months of living in pain with no quality of life to our lifespan, that's our prerogative. But demanding everyone else start paying more to fund $500k treatments to those ends, that does create a moral dilemma because now everyone else has to pay more to get the treatments that will provide real benefits for them and their families. The need to be morally acceptable further constrains the list of viable options and it's only in the intersection of logically correct and morally acceptable that any action can truly be considered as justified.

For all practical intents and purposes, being right or wrong is a question of whether or not a proposed action would be justified. If it's logically correct and morally acceptable, it's justified. If it's logically incorrect or morally unacceptable, it's unjustified. That's it. Don't trivialize it.

The intersection is so narrow, you're not going to stumble into it by accident. If you're not making the effort to be logically correct and morally right, you're not there, no matter how much you might think you are.

In politics, that same accounting applies. Focusing on whether a policy or solution could actually work and weighing the unintended side effects is what it means to try to be logically correct. Determining whether or not the actions we propose to achieve a solution are acceptable is a matter of applying moral filters to all viable options. Only the actions in the intersection can be considered justified. That's not an oversimplification; it's the bare-naked truth we've been denying for far too long. And it's the truth we need to accept — the ends don't justify the means. Take a look at the Venn diagram to better understand this truth, and then look at the other chart to decide for yourself if any of those groups are really getting it "right". Then apply all of this to yourself for a moment. Are you still sure you're so right?

Because we’re a no-BS community, we’re not afraid to jump straight into one of the most divisive (and absurd) debates of all — abortion. It’s logically correct to say that a woman having a baby she doesn’t want likely won’t be good for the woman or the child, and there are other logically correct reasons for keeping abortion legal.

But it’s highly unlikely that half the population genuinely believes there is nothing morally wrong with terminating a fetus with a beating heart. More plausibly, pro-choice supporters believe the logically correct side of the debate outweighs the morally acceptable one and vice versa for pro-life advocates. We’ve pointed out that the overlap between logic and morality is narrow — and in this case, it doesn’t exist at all. When there’s no intersection, there’s no math to weigh arguments. It’s all opinion. At that point, debate is pointless and even absurd — if there is no right, there is no wrong. In that case, just vote and go with the majority. But when an intersection does exist, it makes everything outside of it wrong (unjustified). So all of our arguments, all of our debates — it's almost always one wrong side versus another because currently, nobody's representing the intersection. And we wonder why there's no progress.

If you haven't been thinking in these terms, it's almost assuredly impossible that you've been right all this time because the intersection between what is likely to work and what is actually acceptable is simply too narrow to stumble upon accidentally. Certainly not consistently.

If the only thing you take away from this is a more conscious effort to focus on both morally acceptable and logically correct, you're already more likely to make things make sense than add to the confusion. But participating with or even joining our community would make you a pioneer the rest of the population desperately needs. Stop identifying with one of the dead-end tribes in the chart above. Tribes want followers; we want leaders. Tribes want people who won't question their ideologies; we want people who can understand that ideologies are nothing more than a laundry list of pre-selected ideas for people who are too lazy or cognitively limited to inspect ideas separately and granularly. Too many of you are too smart to keep following things that either don't make sense or aren't right — or both. So get out.

Ask Justina™ is a free community thinktank for finding answers and solutions based on the common ground intersection of logically correct and morally acceptable. We systematically and seamlessly organize everyone's mess into a sensible, shared roadmap of justified solutions.

The approach is so simple: categorize thoughts into ideals (objectives), principles (moral limits), and ideas (actions). Vote on them in a neutral vacuum instead of applying them inconsistently in emotionally charged situations or within biased contexts. Apply the ones we agree on consistently. Evaluate actions for logical correctness first and then filter them through our principles. Find the intersections of logically correct and morally acceptable. No pre-set ideologies. No penalty for questioning things. Just open and honest collaborations for putting together and continuously improving our shared roadmap.

Why don't people organize their own thoughts?  Because people are more interested in the appearance of being right than actually being right.

So instead of listening to reason and replying with logic, most people change the subject, resort to whataboutism, put words in your mouth, accuse you of bad motives, and attack you with labels and semantics. And instead of getting anywhere, you spend all your time sorting out the BS. Sound about right? Well, Ask Justina calls out all the BS for you.

But most of our discussions are just spinning in circles on forums built for outrage and entertainment — anything but making sense of things. Meanwhile, issues like affordability, losing jobs to AI and automation, ever-rising healthcare costs, heightened political violence, and increasing executive overreach keep piling up, while people with good ideas keep getting ignored. As long as discussions keep spinning in circles, there’s no way to weed out bad ideas from good ones and come up with a plan — and without a plan, there's nothing to enforce and nothing to hold anyone accountable to. There's just complaints. Loud and forceful, but still just complaints.

What we need is a shared and enforceable roadmap with clear, justified solutions. A roadmap would put us on the same path and give us confidence that the issues we care about are on the radar. Collective demands that represent all sides are much harder to ignore than individual complaints, even those grounded in tribal outrage. And Ask Justina helps ensure those demands are reasonable and actionable — justified.