Strong Opinions, Weakly Held
Paul Saffo · 2008
"Commit hard to a view so you can update fast when it's wrong."
The instinct is to hedge — hold beliefs loosely so you're never embarrassed. Saffo argues for the opposite: form the sharpest, most concrete opinion you can, and pair it with radical willingness to abandon it in the face of evidence. Sharp opinions test faster; hedged ones drift.
The reason it works is that a vague opinion can accommodate any evidence — it can never be falsified, and so never updates. A strong opinion makes specific predictions, and reality quickly tells you whether it's right. The 'weakly held' part is the discipline: you must genuinely be willing to abandon the view when it fails, or the whole thing turns into stubborn advocacy.
Why does 'strong opinions, weakly held' beat hedging?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- Strong Opinions, Weakly Heldsaffo.com
Game Theory (Bonanno)
"Non-cooperative game theory formalizes strategic interaction — situations where your best move depends on what others do — starting from strategic-form games and building up to the equilibrium concepts that predict how rational agents behave under mutual interdependence."