Believing something strongly tells you how convinced you are, not how correct you are.

The strength of a belief is a fact about you: your temperament, your history, how much you have staked on it. It measures nothing about the world. Certainty and accuracy are produced by completely different processes, which is why deeply held convictions are so often wrong and why the feeling of being sure offers no protection.

When you notice strong conviction, treat it as a prompt to check rather than a reason to stop. Ask what your evidence actually is and how you would answer someone who disagreed in good faith. Conviction that has survived that question is worth something. Conviction that has never faced it is only a feeling.