> Extreme, conflicting viewpoints are often simultaneously true — whether in business or more broadly in human life. It is the hallmark of a wise individual to

> Extreme, conflicting viewpoints are often simultaneously true — whether in business or more broadly in human life. It is the hallmark of a wise individual to eschew the milquetoast path of middling compromise, and instead to embrace these "antinomies" of reason and fuse them into a concrete course of action; to be patient and comfortable with cognitive dissonance. I fully agree, but I prefer to think of it in terms of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis.[1] When one has a mental model of how the world works; that's the Thesis. Then one comes across a different model that explains how the world works that contradicts one's Thesis; that's the Antithesis. Over time, one figures out how to reconcile these two contradicting models into a new model; that's the Synthesis. This model of how thought evolves can be applied to large-scale movements in history. For example, a Thesis of Western capitalist economies in the 19th and early 20th century was that welfare programs were unnecessary in market economies. This led to the emergence of an Antithesis in the form of the socialist movement and eventually communist states, which represented a new form of political and economic organization. Eventually, a new Synthesis emerged: the modern Western welfare state, combining the wealth-generation forces of capitalism with a government-funded safety net that dulls the sharpest edges of the market. The Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis model can also be applied to the evolution of scientific thought. For example, a widely held Thesis in Physics prior to Einstein's theoretical breakthroughs was that light must travel through a substance scientists called the "luminiferous aether" in order to satisfy Newton's and Maxwell's equations.[2] However, in experiment after experiment the speed of light somehow always appeared to be constant to all observers, regardless of conditions, which made no sense within the prevailing theoretical framework (Newton's and Maxwell's equations); this was the Antithesis to the prevailing Thesis. Finally, Einsten reconciled the Thesis and the Antithesis into a new Synthesis: the special and then the general Theory of Relativity. The Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis model is a great mental model to add to one's arsenal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether