Due to the efficiency that close-mindedness offers, it's in our nature to gravitate towards it. However, business, cultural, and societal opportunities are realized by those who don't take the easy path of always going along with the herd's current assumptions about the world.<p>Peter Thiel's now-famous interview question of "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" seeks, at least in part, to tease out whether the interviewee possesses an open-mindedness allowing her to see things differently from the herd.<p>---<p>To offer this question more focus, let's define being "open minded" to manifest itself in the following ways:<p>- regularly doubting one's understanding of the world while simultaneously taking positions and acting based off of that current, imperfect understanding.
- grateful when new knowledge or understanding leads to changing one's worldview to be more accurate.<p>---<p>Thanks for any strategies or thoughts you can give here, HN. I mull over this one often :)
This thread may also end up exploring how people decide when they're dealing with an irrefutable truth (2+2=4), versus not (The world is flat, obviously.)