Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Our instinct in our personal and professional lives is to prove ourselves right. Every yes makes us feel good. Every yes makes us stick to what we think we know. Every yes gets us a gold star and a hit of dopamine. But every no brings us one step closer to the truth. Every no provides far more information than a yes does. Progress occurs only when we generate negative outcomes by trying to rebut rather than confirm our initial hunch. The point of proving yourself wrong isn’t to feel good. The point is to make sure your spacecraft doesn’t crash, your business doesn’t fall apart, or your health doesn’t break down.

A scientific theory is never proven right. It’s simply not proven wrong. Only when scientists work hard—but fail—to beat the crap out of their own ideas can they begin to develop confidence in those ideas.

“I don’t like that man,” Abraham Lincoln is said to have observed. “I must get to know him better.”

Regularly ask yourself—as Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog does—How many things am I dead wrong about?

When Harlan’s critics accused him of flip-flopping, his answer was simple: I’d rather be right than consistent.

When the world around you changes—when the tech bubble bursts or self-driving cars become the norm—the ability to change with the world confers an extraordinary advantage.

If you have trouble challenging your own beliefs, you can pretend they’re someone else’s.

In the end, if we don’t prove ourselves wrong, others will do it for us.

In the end, if we don’t prove ourselves wrong, others will do it for us. If we pretend to have all the answers, our cover will eventually be blown. If we don’t recognize the flaws in our own thinking, those flaws will come to haunt us.

Our goal should be to find what’s right—not to be right.

In the modern world, we live in a perpetual echo chamber. Although technology has torn down some barriers, it has ended up erecting others. We friend people like us on Facebook. We follow people like us on Twitter. We read blogs and newspapers that vibrate on the same political frequency. It’s easy to connect only with our tribe and disconnect from the others.

As our echo chambers get louder and louder, we’re repeatedly bombarded with ideas that reiterate our own. When we see our own ideas mirrored in others, our confidence levels skyrocket. Opposing ideas are nowhere to be seen, so we assume they don’t exist or that those who adopt them must be irrational.

As our echo chambers get louder and louder, we’re repeatedly bombarded with ideas that reiterate our own. When we see our own ideas mirrored in others, our confidence levels skyrocket. Opposing ideas are nowhere to be seen, so we assume they don’t exist or that those who adopt them must be irrational. As a result, we must consciously step outside our echo chamber. Before making an important decision, ask yourself, “Who will disagree with me?” If you don’t know any people who disagree with you, make a point to find them. Expose yourself to environments where your opinions can be challenged, as uncomfortable and awkward as that might be.

You can also ask people who normally agree with you to disagree with you.

The voice of dissent could be anyone. You can ask yourself, “What would a rocket scientist do?” and imagine a rocket scientist, armed with the tools in this book, critically questioning your ideas.

Intel CEO Andy Grove used).60 In constructing a model of how an adversary thinks, you must be as objective and fair as possible. Avoid the instinct to caricature the opposing position, making it easier to debunk

“You’re not entitled to take a view,” he cautions, “unless and until you can argue better against that view than the smartest guy who holds that opposite view.”

Most of our decisions in life are based not on tests, but on hunches and limited information.

We conduct tests—not to prove ourselves wrong, but to confirm what we believe is true.

In a well-designed test, outcomes can’t be predetermined. You must be willing to fail.