Jonathan Haidt spent years working with anthropologist Richard Shweder at the University of Chicago, and his top takeaway/mental rule of thumb from the encounter is a doozy.

If someone asserts it, try denying it and see if that makes sense. If someone denies it, try asserting it and see if that makes sense.

“It’s a great way to overcome confirmation bias and to try on new ideas,” Haidt has put it, and the experience on the whole, “really changed me and prepared me to step out of my prior politics, my prior moralism, my prior self-righteousness.”

A strategy is, among other things, a theory of success. And so the Schweder test applies. It seems to me the simplest strategy strength-test there is, but there is a catch. You want this questioning-opposing-force to come from a friend first.

No strategy should go untested by loyal opposition. You should never, ever, ever roll out a strategy that hasn't been tested by a friend first.

Why doesn't that happen?