Contradictions are the engine of progress. When you allow 2 opposing ideas to exist together, you create the space to learn, build new knowledge and let one triumph.

Triumphant ideas lead to progress. 

But you can only have a triumphant idea if you allow a contradictory idea, one that challenges to defeat or enable the other one to be unvanquished.

Here’s an idea: Fiat is forever.

If you treat this idea that money as it existed yesterday, is forever, you run the risk of becoming static, inevitably imploding into oblivion. But when you allow a contradictory idea to enter the fiat sphere, you create an opportunity for progress.

New money can collide with old money to create a supernova explosion. One of them collapses into nothing or creates a neutron star that enlightens and fires humanity forward.

But supernovas can only happen if you're comfortable with being fallible, not knowing 100%. As long as you leave space for at least a 1% margin of error in a belief, a new idea can enter it and challenge the existing, triumphant one. 

So the supernova of ideas starts with the belief that nothing is final. Only then can conjectures and refutations do their thing: you make a guess and try to refute it.

Now, whether fiat money survives the bombardment of refutations, is irrelevant. What matters is whether you allow this supernova of ideas to happen in the first place to learn, gain new knowledge and make progress. 

And so it is with any other idea: Products, features, parenthood, design or culture. 

Progress happens in the absence of certainty.