I don’t currently know how to “look for counterexamples” or “consider why I might be wrong” more specifically than “just… try, at all, and then try again.”
I’m curious if anyone has any tacit knowledge for more specific subskills/habits that work for them here.
One thing I find helpful, is to outsource this to my mental model of other people, or actual other people. If you come at them with “This is definitely true”, what kind of objections do they come up with? Not just explicit objections that they say, but also implicit objections that they don’t know how to articulate. Once you’ve explored that space and know that all roads lead to them being fully on board—again, not just in explicit claims but in revealed belief as well—then you know that at least they can’t come up with a reason you might be wrong.
It’s still only as good as your other people, but if no one you know can find fault in your reasoning that’s not a bad start.
The usual heuristics for problem solving should apply. Solve easier similar problems, then put additional constraints on them and solve them anyway. Lift constraints until the problem gets solved, try to reapply them back.
For “consider why I might be wrong”, steelmanning opposing positions as views held in their own right seems like a better framing, rather than constructing something in opposition to your own views (someone might disagree with your views not for the sake of disagreement, but because their position just happens to be different). Which requires being comfortable with holding many contradictory views sufficiently seriously that their individual development isn’t damaged by not being actually endorsed (while not losing track of what is actually endorsed, when that’s relevant at all, which is not always).
I don’t currently know how to “look for counterexamples” or “consider why I might be wrong” more specifically than “just… try, at all, and then try again.”
I’m curious if anyone has any tacit knowledge for more specific subskills/habits that work for them here.
One thing I find helpful, is to outsource this to my mental model of other people, or actual other people. If you come at them with “This is definitely true”, what kind of objections do they come up with? Not just explicit objections that they say, but also implicit objections that they don’t know how to articulate. Once you’ve explored that space and know that all roads lead to them being fully on board—again, not just in explicit claims but in revealed belief as well—then you know that at least they can’t come up with a reason you might be wrong.
It’s still only as good as your other people, but if no one you know can find fault in your reasoning that’s not a bad start.
The usual heuristics for problem solving should apply. Solve easier similar problems, then put additional constraints on them and solve them anyway. Lift constraints until the problem gets solved, try to reapply them back.
For “consider why I might be wrong”, steelmanning opposing positions as views held in their own right seems like a better framing, rather than constructing something in opposition to your own views (someone might disagree with your views not for the sake of disagreement, but because their position just happens to be different). Which requires being comfortable with holding many contradictory views sufficiently seriously that their individual development isn’t damaged by not being actually endorsed (while not losing track of what is actually endorsed, when that’s relevant at all, which is not always).