This essay fundamentally misrepresents "strong opinions, loosely held," and is therefore misleading and useless.<p>-- that's a strong opinion, loosely held. Let me explain:<p>The word "strong" in "strong opinions" doesn't mean what the author thinks it does. For example: "toxic certainty" and "overconfidence". That is <i>not</i> what "strong opinions" means here. In fact, the author alludes to the correct interpretation later when they say "The idea of strong opinions, loosely held is that you can make <i>bombastic statements</i>, and everyone should implicitly assume that you’ll happily change your mind in a heartbeat if new data suggests you are wrong." Emphasis mine.<p>Putting it plainly, "strong" refers to the position being taken. "Tesla makes a good electric car" is a weak position. "Tesla makes the best electric car on the market, no one else even comes close" is a strong position. Note that in neither case is my conviction in making the statement in evidence.<p>"Loosely held" is contradictory to the expressed descriptions of "toxic certainty" and "overconfidence".<p>So: the point of the saying is that people should stake out positions of significance without worrying so much about whether they have firmly researched and can support those positions. In a general way, the expression is refining the expression "for the sake of argument."<p>The article then goes on to reasonably criticize the <i>actual</i> idea by suggesting that it is an ideal rarely lived up to in practice, and offers a solution (stating that you are not 100% certain) that actually reinforces the actual point of the original saying.<p>So the title should be something like "Strong Opinions Loosely Held is the Most Abused Idea in Tech -- I'm 90% Certain of That."<p>But this is all just a loosely held idea, I'm happy to be dissuaded.