Pyrrhonism — the ancient skeptical tradition founded by Pyrrho of Elis — had one practical rule that lawyers, strategists, and anyone who argues for a living should find quietly devastating: suspend judgment not as a last resort when evidence is ambiguous, but as the first move, before you've assembled your case. Sextus Empiricus, who preserved this tradition in his *Outlines of Pyrrhonism*, called this epoché — the deliberate act of suspending assumptions before interpreting — and he argued it produced something unexpected: not paralysis, but a cleaner kind of clarity. The Pyrrhonist insight is that we typically build our argument first and gather evidence second, which means the argument is really a prior commitment dressed in evidentiary clothing. In court, in negotiation, in any situation where you're constructing a persuasive case, the question worth sitting with is not 'what supports my position?' but 'at what point, exactly, did my position harden into something I was no longer actually examining?' The discipline Sextus describes isn't radical doubt — it's catching the moment before certainty crystallizes, which is the only moment you can still change direction without cost.

What is the last position you held that you'd describe as 'settled' — and what would it cost you, professionally or personally, to reopen it for two minutes of genuine scrutiny?

Drawing from Pyrrhonian Skepticism — Sextus Empiricus (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, c. 2nd century CE)