I have historically been too hasty to go from “other people seem very wrong on this topic” to “I am right on this topic”
I think it’s helpful here to switch from binary wrong/right language to continuous language. We can talk of degrees of wrongness and rightness.
Consider people who are smarter than those they usually argue with, in the specific sense of “smarter” where we mean they produce more-correct, better-informed, or more-logical arguments and objections. These people probably have some (binarily) wrong ideas. The people they usually argue with, however, are likely to be (by degrees) wronger.
When the other people are wronger, the smart person is in fact righter. So I think, as far as you were thinking in terms of degrees of wrongness and rightness, it would be perfectly fair for you to have had the sense you did. It wouldn’t have been a hasty generalization. And if you stopped to consider whether there might exist views that are even righter still, you’d probably conclude there are.
Regarding the title problem,
I think it’s helpful here to switch from binary wrong/right language to continuous language. We can talk of degrees of wrongness and rightness.
Consider people who are smarter than those they usually argue with, in the specific sense of “smarter” where we mean they produce more-correct, better-informed, or more-logical arguments and objections. These people probably have some (binarily) wrong ideas. The people they usually argue with, however, are likely to be (by degrees) wronger.
When the other people are wronger, the smart person is in fact righter. So I think, as far as you were thinking in terms of degrees of wrongness and rightness, it would be perfectly fair for you to have had the sense you did. It wouldn’t have been a hasty generalization. And if you stopped to consider whether there might exist views that are even righter still, you’d probably conclude there are.