Paul Graham：How to Think for Yourself, Excerpt 4

To go beyond this general advice, we need to look at the internal structure of independent-mindedness — at the individual muscles we need to exercise, as it were. It seems to me that it has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity. Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief. For most people, degree of belief rushes unexamined toward the extremes: the unlikely becomes impossible, and the probable becomes certain.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/think.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 4 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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