The Framework of Thinking That Truth-Seeking Civilizations are Built Upon
Paul Saffo has a brilliant framework for creating effective models of reality (and consequently, forecasts) which can be summarized in this simple sentence:
"Strong opinions loosely held."
- Marc Andreessen
Society reaches truth in an arena when an individual experiments and validates a hypothesis. In order for that to happen, the individual must believe in her hypothesis (her opinion in this case) so much so that they would be willing to take responsibility for its eventual truthfulness and take action to prove or validate her opinion. Therefore, for a society to reach the truth, its members have to have strong opinions, test them out, and be willing to change their opinion (error correct) if it turns out to be false according to the feedback from the real world.
What ends up happening (and why most people believe that this framework doesn't work) is that we get "Strong opinions strongly held." or we get "Weak opinions loosely held." On one hand, you have individuals who hold extreme opinions and never listen to criticism or alternate ideas (idée fixe). On the other hand, you have individuals who don't want to take responsibility for the outcome of their opinions.
Contrary to popular belief, I think this framework works splendidly. It's just way too hard to implement all the time because we are hardwired not to act like this. It's against our biology.
However, some techniques help you get closer to a "Strong opinions loosely held." mindset without the common problems associated with it. For instance, when faced with a situation where you need to make a judgement call, ask yourself: "How much am I willing to bet on that?" This way, you have skin in the game and hence you are more motivated to get things right. If you also reframe your conclusions from belief statements to probability/confidence statements (I'm 70% confident that such-and-such will happen) then you'll be able to shift your opinions from one end of the spectrum to the other quite easily.
