Say something that could be wrong

An answer is only worth having if it could turn out to be wrong. The safe answer can never fail, and that is exactly why it helps nobody.

Ask a hotel desk in Al Khobar which of two restaurants is better, and you will often hear that both are very good. No dinner can disprove that, so it tells you nothing. Once in a while, the person behind the desk picks one: the Turkish place, a table in the garden, the lentil soup to start. By ten o'clock you will know whether he was right.

The first answer is easy to give. You can make it neater or more polite, but no one can ever prove it wrong, because it never claimed anything.

The second answer takes a risk. If the garden is full or the soup arrives cold, everyone knows whose advice it was. That risk is not a flaw in the answer. It is the whole reason the answer is worth anything.

The same goes for most things you put your name to, from a shop sign to an opinion a friend asked you for.

The safe version can only be made neater. The version worth making picks a side, says this and not that, and accepts that it might be wrong.

If nothing could ever prove you wrong, you have not said anything yet.