What am I missing, and why you cannot find it by looking harder

What capacity around me is lying unused, and what unmet need could it be matched to?

Question 9 of the Index

You have gone over it. You have asked the people you trust and they agreed with you, and the agreement did not settle anything, because what worries you is not whether your reasoning is sound. It is whether you are reasoning about the right thing.

A blind spot is not a gap in what you know. It is a gap you cannot look at directly, because the thing that would show it to you is the same faculty that is producing it. That is why asking harder does not work, and why asking a friend often does not either: a friend who likes you is working from your account of the situation, and your account is where the missing piece went missing.

What does work is a question aimed at the frame rather than at the contents. Not am I right about this, but what would have to be true for the opposite to be right. Most people can answer that in one sentence. Most people have never been asked it. And the sentence is usually the thing that was missing.

There is a second move, uncomfortable enough that it tends to get skipped. Ask what you would have to admit about yourself if the other side turned out to be right. You do not have to answer it out loud. The speed of the flinch is already information.