Ask what alternative perspectives would say

Deliberately steelman the strongest objection to your current position before treating it as settled.

Why it works

People construct arguments from their own perspective and tend to miss objections that are visible from other vantage points. Explicitly asking "what would someone who disagrees say?" recruits the alternative perspective’s strongest case rather than the weakest version your own mind generates for it. The strongest objection, not the easiest to dismiss, is the one that should govern whether you update your position.

How to do it

1. After developing a position, ask: "Who has the most thoughtful objection to this, and what is it?"
2. Reconstruct that objection in its strongest form — not in the form easiest to dismiss.
3. Ask: "Does this objection reveal a weakness in my position that I need to address?"
4. If yes, revise; if no, be able to state specifically why the objection fails in this case.

Evidence

Perspective-taking and adversarial collaboration improve reasoning quality in research settings. The specific Socratic practice of actively seeking the strongest objection is philosophical practice rather than a separately studied psychological intervention. (mechanistic)

People are poor at genuinely inhabiting an opposing perspective, particularly for emotionally charged positions. The practice improves with deliberate habit and is most powerful when a genuine opponent articulates the objection directly.

Sources

• Moshman & Geil (1998), "Collaborative reasoning," Cognitive Development — on reasoning improvement through peer dialogue

Common mistake

Generating the weakest version of the opposing view and defeating it, then concluding the position is settled — this is strawmanning disguised as open-mindedness.