A Roman rhetorical technique called *dissoi logoi* — arguing both sides of a case with equal force before choosing — was considered essential training for advocates precisely because it revealed which arguments survived contact with their strongest opposition. The Sophist Protagoras formalized it, and centuries later the legal tradition built entire institutions around it. What's striking is that modern cognitive science, specifically the work on 'considering the opposite' by psychologist Charles Lord in the 1980s, found that this ancient drill is one of the only reliably effective interventions against confirmation bias — not because it generates new information, but because it forces the mind to inhabit a different structure. The mental model you hold doesn't change its content when you argue against it; it changes its *status* — from settled conclusion to live hypothesis. For a product leader, this is surgical: pick the mental model you've used most confidently this quarter and spend fifteen minutes writing the strongest possible case that it's wrong. Not as devil's advocacy theater, but as genuine prosecution. The goal isn't to abandon the model — it's to discover whether you're holding a tool or wearing a cage.

What would you have to stop believing about how your team works for your current product approach to be badly wrong?

Drawing from Greek Sophistic Philosophy / Classical Rhetoric — Protagoras (Dissoi Logoi tradition, c. 5th century BCE), with Charles Lord (Lord, Ross & Lepper, 'Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979)