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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

You view yourself as the other tribe, and therefore criticize yourself as if you were your worst enemy. From that perspective most stupid ideas you have are easy to see through. You know how stupid the other side is, yeah you probably look around that stupid yourself unless you go through this process regularly and fixes the issues you find in yourself.

Although I don't think it is possible to do it perfectly, but you can fix some things this way.

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> You know how stupid the other side is, yeah you probably look around that stupid yourself

Any other techniques for dealing with this?

To get a better measurement of my own intelligence I think about my “dumb friend”, and then try to realize that that’s probably actually about how smart I am.

Always attack your own ideas as hard as you can. Ask yourself what evidence you have for what you believe is true. Figure out possible facts that will prove your idea false. Seek out evidence for those contrarian facts. Be ready to drop precious ideas that turn out to be brittle against facts.

Any test for determining whether I’m doing a “good job” at dropping ideas that contradict evidence?

How often have you dropped an idea you think is true after attacking it with everything you have? If it never happens then it is likely that you are not doing a “good job”. If few ideas you like/agree with survive then you are more likely to be doing a “good job”. It is humbling for me to realise how quickly I can emotionally believe something to be true and then realise that I have no real evidence to support it. And remembering all the things I used to think was true and I now realise might not be (not enough conclusive evidence). The key insight is that ideas are just models of the world. All flawed and with the potential to be improved/more accurate. Don’t become your ideas. Stand apart from your ideas/truths and be critical of them. Assume you are wrong and try to prove it.

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