This point by Robert Greene on exploring contradictory ideas is interesting.
Reading it, I immediately recall the passage by James Altucher.
Altucher advocated using old ideas in a new way and then sprinkling them with your own point of view.
Greene lays it out as the need to explore inherent contradictions.
I enjoy some of the obvious (and not so obvious) contradictions of economics.
For example, well-meaning minimum wage laws cause unemployment among unskilled workers.
Or, that government spending has no overall long-run impact.
I have found the writer Donald Miller effective in uncovering hidden truths itching below the surface.
“Your task as a creative thinker is to actively explore the unconscious and contradictory parts of your personality, and to examine similar contradictions and tensions in the world at large. Expressing these tensions within your work in any medium will create a powerful effect on others, making them sense unconscious truths or feelings that have been obscured or repressed. You look at society at large and the various contradictions that are rampant—for instance, the way in which a culture that espouses the ideal of free expression is charged with an oppressive code of political correctness that tamps free expression down. In science, you look for ideas that go against the existing paradigm, or that seem inexplicable because they are so contradictory. All of these contradictions contain a rich mine of information about a reality that is deeper and more complex than the one immediately perceived. By delving into the chaotic and fluid zone below the level of consciousness where opposites meet, you will be surprised at the exciting and fertile ideas that will come bubbling up to the surface.”
–Robert Greene, Mastery