What is types of contradictions?

Types of contradictions is a concept in personal epistemology: Some contradictions are superficial and resolve easily while others reveal fundamental tensions.

Example: You believe 'I should eat healthy' and also 'I want this donut.' That resolves in seconds — it's a momentary preference conflict, not a structural fault. But 'I believe people deserve autonomy' and 'I believe experts should override uninformed choices' — that contradiction touches your foundational model of human agency. You can't resolve it with a quick decision. It requires you to reexamine what you actually mean by autonomy, what counts as informed, and where your boundary sits. The first contradiction lives at the surface. The second lives in the architecture.

This concept is part of Phase 19 (Contradiction Resolution) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for contradiction resolution.