TB: Take the Other Person's Point of View

Genuinely model the other person's perspective — their beliefs, incentives, emotional state, and reasoning — before responding. This is not strategic maneuvering but an epistemic practice: understanding what the world looks like from their position makes you both more effective and more accurate.

Most interpersonal and intellectual failures trace to the assumption that others see what we see. Steelmanning an opposing view — making it as strong as possible before engaging — is the intellectually honest version of this. The habit of asking "If I were wrong, why would that be?" applies this model to one's own beliefs.

• Take the other person's point of view (source note): "If there is any one secret to success it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own." Making it a habit to ask: "If I were wrong, why would that be?"
• "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that" — John Stuart Mill

• Hanlon's Razor
• The Middle Way
• Incentives Matter