Sure, but all of those "virtues" have good and bad manifestations. I agree that arrogance can be terrible. > Why would you expose your opinions to challenge i

Sure, but all of those "virtues" have good and bad manifestations. I agree that arrogance can be terrible. > Why would you expose your opinions to challenge if you know they are right? You expose them to challenge because you know they're right; you don't act to protect them by keeping them hidden and not testing them. You "put them under load." This is basically mental and rhetorical dogfooding. edit: I think the difference is between "I think I'm right" and "I want to believe I'm right." If you want to protect your sense that you're right, you'll be both hesitant to test your beliefs and vicious in their defense. Conversely, if you're attached to the actual state of being right, you'll trial your beliefs and abandon them if they fail you. Arrogance, or at least a moderate degree of it, can help you act like the latter by making ideas seem more reliable than they deserve, creating natural trials. edit: I guess the common thread is that arrogance promotes exploration by suppressing fear of loss.