Holding Opposing Ideas
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Holding Opposing Ideas
Open-minded people can take in the thoughts of others without losing their ability to think well—they can hold two or more conflicting concepts in their mind and go back and forth between them to assess their relative merits.
Ray Dalio • Principles: Life and Work
The three components of independent-mindedness work in concert: fastidiousness about truth and resistance to being told what to think leave space in your brain, and curiosity finds new ideas to fill it.
bad time • How to Think for Yourself
Take the time to listen to smart people with whom you disagree.
This is not easy to do. Over time, any firm will find that certain methods and biases tend to work very well, and the more successful it is, the more it will develop its own unique mindset. We couldn’t succeed without the methods and principles that we learn over time, nor can we cons
... See moreJoe Lonsdale • Lessons from Peter Thiel
Very few issues worthy of debate are black and white. That’s why we need to grapple with the gray areas of life, of which there are many. It’s always tempting to reduce issues to binary choices between right and wrong, good and evil, beneficial and destructive. But it’s ultimately self-defeating; binary thinking discourages complex reasoning while ... See more
Mastering the art of arguing productively
In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald,3 “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Builders of greatness are comfortable with paradox. They don’t oppress themselves with what we call the “Tyranny of the OR,” which pushes people to believe tha
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