A mental exercise for finding new truths

farez
farez
Aug 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Peter Thiel famously asks job interviewees the following:

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

This is also a question that he recommends entrepreneurs try to answer. Thiel believes that in order to get as close as possible to predicting the future, we must look at what’s true today and how that truth will change (or what new truth will emerge) in future. The question above is one such method of thinking about that.

The common way to answer this question is to dig down inside you, find pre-existing thoughts and decide whether those thoughts answer the question, by analysing it against popular opinion or debates you’ve had in the past. But this is hard, because, again according to Thiel:

It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon. And it’s psychologically difficult because anyone trying to answer must say something she knows to be unpopular. Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

And a good answer takes the following form:

“Most people believe in x, but the truth is the opposite of x

To me, it’s the format of the answer which is the most useful thing here. I still can’t answer the original question above, but I found that just by treating the answer in the format above as a hypothesis, I can use it as a thinking tool for discovering new truths.

For example, if I was an avid runner, I could start with the statement (where I’ve substituted the x above with test in bold):

“Most people believe to prevent long term injuries you have to wear shoes that are cushioned and shaped to your feet, but the truth is cushioned shoes are bad for you.”

Today, there is enough research and collective experience in the running world to show that running with shoes that are as close as possible to running barefoot is in fact better for distance running*. Big brands started selling new “barefoot” running shoes and these days standard running shoes have thin soles. But if you had tried to validate this statement just before the barefoot running hype, you may have then stumbled upon a game-changing idea.

So whether you’re lucky enough to be able to answer that contrarian question with a pre-existing belief or not, I believe the format of the answer given above is a good tool for interrogating popular “truths”, thereby proactively creating new ideas and opportunities.

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*I am not an expert in running shoe technology but if you’re interested in finding out more, I can’t recommend enough the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

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