Top highlights from Think Again
If knowledge is power, knowing what we dont know is wisdom.
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We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isnt limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.
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We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.
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Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrongnot for reasons why we must be rightand revising our views based on what we learn.
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We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt,
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Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because youre faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.
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A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.
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How do you know? Its a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others. The power lies in its frankness. Its nonjudgmentala straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity that doesnt put people on the defensive.
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Part of the problem is cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that were mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. Yet there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities.
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A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when its time to abandon some of your most treasured toolsand some of the most cherished parts of your identity.
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The less intelligent we are in a particular domain, the more we seem to overestimate our actual intelligence in that domain.
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Humility is often misunderstood. Its not a matter of having low self-confidence. One of the Latin roots of humility means from the earth. Its about being groundedrecognizing that were flawed and fallible. Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. Evidence shows thats distinct from how much you believe in your methods. You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. Thats the sweet spot of confidence.
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Its a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. Its a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.
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Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction, blogger Tim Urban explains. While humility is a permeable filter that absorbs life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom, arrogance is a rubber shield that life experience simply bounces off of.
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Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world, theres another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.
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When were in scientist mode, we refuse to let our ideas become ideologies. We dont start with answers or solutions; we lead with questions and puzzles. We dont preach from intuition; we teach from evidence. We dont just have healthy skepticism about other peoples arguments; we dare to disagree with our own arguments. Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrongnot for reasons why we must be rightand revising our views based on what we learn.
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We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995.
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We all have blind spots in our knowledge and opinions. The bad news is that they can leave us blind to our blindness, which gives us false confidence in our judgment and prevents us from rethinking. The good news is that with the right kind of confidence, we can learn to see ourselves more clearly and update our views. In drivers training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life, since our minds dont come equipped with those tools, we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly.
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Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. George Bernard Shaw
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After all, the purpose of learning isnt to affirm our beliefs; its to evolve our beliefs.
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Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in lifethey might be excellence and generosity, freedom and fairness, or security and integrity.
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When youre wrong, its not something to be depressed about. Say, Hey, I discovered something!
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What evidence would change your mind? If the answer is nothing, then theres no point in continuing the debate. You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it think.
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Convincing other people to think again isnt just about making a good argument, its about establishing that we have the right motives in doing so. When we concede that someone else has made a good point, we signal that were not preachers, prosecutors, or politicians trying to advance an agenda. We're scientists trying to get to the truth.
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When we find out we might be wrong, a standard defense is Im entitled to my opinion. Id like to modify that: yes, were entitled to hold opinions inside our own heads. If we choose to express them out loud, though, I think its our responsibility to ground them in logic and facts, share our reasoning with others, and change our minds when better evidence emerges.
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those who cant... dont know they cant. According to whats now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, its when we lack competence that were most likely to be brimming with overconfidence.
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People often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once weve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time.
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Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift: our attention. Once weve demonstrated that we care about them and their goals, theyre more willing to listen to us.
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confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see.
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Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart.
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Inverse charisma. What a wonderful turn of phrase to capture the magnetic quality of a great listener. Think about how rare that kind of listening is.
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Founder Ray Dalio told me, If you dont look back at yourself and think, Wow, how stupid I was a year ago, then you must not have learned much in the last year.
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When someone becomes hostile, if you respond by viewing the argument as a war, you can either attack or retreat. If instead you treat it as a dance, you have another optionyou can sidestep. Having a conversation about the conversation shifts attention away from the substance of the disagreement and toward the process for having a dialogue. The more anger and hostility the other person expresses, the more curiosity and interest you show. When someone is losing control, your tranquility is a sign of strength. It takes the wind out of their emotional sails.
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We become blinded by arrogance when were utterly convinced of our strengths and our strategies. We get paralyzed by doubt when we lack conviction in both. We can be consumed by an inferiority complex when we know the right method but feel uncertain about our ability to execute it. What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.
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By asking questions rather than thinking for the audience, we invite them to join us as a partner and think for themselves. If we approach an argument as a war, there will be winners and losers. If we see it more as a dance, we can begin to choreograph a way forward. By considering the strongest version of an opponents perspective and limiting our responses to our few best steps, we have a better chance of finding a rhythm.
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Psychologists have long found that the person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you. You get to pick the reasons you find most compelling, and you come away with a real sense of ownership over them.
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Lets agree to disagree shouldnt end a discussion. It should start a new conversation, with a focus on understanding and learning rather than arguing and persuading. Thats what wed do in scientist mode: take the long view and ask how we could have handled the debate more effectively.
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When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isnt going as we hoped, our first instinct isnt usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment.
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Escalation of commitment is a major factor in preventable failures. Ironically, it can be fueled by one of the most celebrated engines of success: grit. Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance, and research shows that it can play an important role in motivating us to accomplish long-term goals. When it comes to rethinking, though, grit may have a dark side. Experiments show that gritty people are more likely to overplay their hands in roulette and more willing to stay the course in tasks at which theyre failing and success is impossible.
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Ive noticed a paradox in great scientists and superforecasters: the reason theyre so comfortable being wrong is that theyre terrified of being wrong. What sets them apart is the time horizon. Theyre determined to reach the correct answer in the long run, and they know that means they have to be open to stumbling, backtracking, and rerouting in the short run. They shun rose-colored glasses in favor of a sturdy mirror. The fear of missing the mark next year is a powerful motivator to get a crystal-clear view of last years mistakes. People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot, Jeff Bezos says. If you dont change your mind frequently, youre going to be wrong a lot.
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There's a fine line between heroic persistence and foolish stubbornness. Sometimes the best kind of grit is gritting our teeth and turning around
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Polarization is reinforced by conformity: peripheral members fit in and gain status by following the lead of the most prototypical member of the group, who often holds the most intense views.
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Discovering I was wrong felt joyful because it meant Id learned something. As Danny told me, Being wrong is the only way I feel sure Ive learned anything.
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the worst performers are the most overconfident.
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When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isnt going as we hoped, our first instinct isnt usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment. Evidence shows that entrepreneurs persist with failing strategies when they should pivot, NBA general managers and coaches keep investing in new contracts and more playing time for draft busts, and politicians continue sending soldiers to wars that didnt need to be fought in the first place.
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I might add that it doesnt become the truth just because you believe it. Its a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. Its a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.
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This book is an invitation to let go of knowledge and opinions that are no longer serving you well, and to anchor your sense of self in flexibility rather than consistency.
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Acknowledging complexity doesnt make speakers and writers less convincing; it makes them more credible. It doesnt lose viewers and readers; it maintains their engagement while stoking their curiosity.
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The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that contradict your views.
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In a classic study of highly accomplished architects, the most creative ones graduated with a B average. Their straight-A counterparts were so determined to be right that they often failed to take the risk of rethinking the orthodoxy. A similar pattern emerged in a study of students who graduated at the top of their class. Valedictorians arent likely to be the futures visionaries, education researcher Karen Arnold explains. They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.
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In high schools it seems that half of teachers lecture most or all of the time.* Lectures are not always the best method of learning, and they are not enough to develop students into lifelong learners. If you spend all of your school years being fed information and are never given the opportunity to question it, you wont develop the tools for rethinking that you need in life.
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Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong.
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To paraphrase a line attributed to Isaac Asimov, great discoveries often begin not with Eureka! but with Thats funny...
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We often favor feeling right, over being right.
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Requiring proof is an enemy of progress.
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Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. Evidence shows thats distinct from how much you believe in your methods. You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. Thats the sweet spot of confidence.
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Arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses.
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In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once weve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time.
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As stereotypes stick and prejudice deepens, we dont just identify with our own group; we disidentify with our adversaries, coming to define who we are by what were not. We dont just preach the virtues of our side; we find self-worth in prosecuting the vices of our rivals.
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Pride breeds conviction rather than doubt,
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