Paul, brilliant essay. You've eloquently put forward a solid argument about why Foxes are better than Hedgehogs (see: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books...). People's predictive ability (and judgment) seem to diminish proportional to the strength of their belief in some ideology.
Avoiding identifying too much with any worldview seems to be the best path to wisdom. A good resource is Berkeley academic Philip Tetlock's work in this field (http://fora.tv/2007/01/26/Why_Foxes_Are_Better_Forecasters_T...).
Chetan Chawla ([email protected])