Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Belief hardens fastest around things you have no direct contact with. Distant countries, other people’s marriages, fields you have never worked in: the less information arrives, the fewer obstacles there are to a clean and confident picture. Nearby subjects resist that, because you keep running into facts that spoil the shape.

Take a strong view you hold about something you have never seen up close. Find one person with direct experience of it and ask what outsiders usually get wrong. You do not have to abandon the view, but let it acquire some edges.