Intellectual humility means recognizing your beliefs might be wrong, not lacking confidence. Four questions help build it: Do you defend positions like a soldier or explore like a scout? Do you prioritize being right or understanding? Do you ask others to disagree with you? Do you enjoy discovering you're mistaken?
Intellectual humility is the willingness to recognize that what you think, what you believe, might be wrong. It's not about being a pushover or lacking confidence. Quite the opposite. Intellectual humility is about being open and recognizing that we all have cognitive blind spots. But developing this virtue is really hard. I've looked around for advice, and the best seems to come from Warren Berger, author of The Book of Beautiful Questions. He suggests 4 questions to test your intellectual humility. The first question: Do I think more like a soldier or a scout? Soldiers defend positions, scouts explore new territory. Second, would I rather be right or would I rather understand? Third, do I solicit and seek out opposing views? Instead of saying, don't you agree? Say, tell me if you disagree and explain why. Fourth, do I enjoy the pleasant surprise of discovering I'm mistaken? Being wrong isn't a failure, it's a success! You've just learned something new. We need more intellectual humility, and I really believe that using these 4 questions can help you develop this quality and cascade it into the world.
