We tend to treat changing your mind as a sign of weakness. In public life especially, the person who held position A and now holds position B is called a flip-flopper, a panderer, someone who lacks conviction. The person who held position A through all available evidence to the contrary is called principled.
I’ve come to think this is exactly backwards.
The ability to update your view in light of new information is not weakness. It is what thinking actually looks like when it’s working. Sticking to a position because you stated it publicly, or because your identity has become wrapped up in it, or because changing it would require admitting you were wrong — none of those are virtues. They are forms of intellectual pride dressed in the language of consistency.
I’m not talking about changing your mind because the wind changed, or because someone applied social pressure, or because the new position is more comfortable. That’s a different thing. I’m talking about encountering a genuinely good argument or a piece of evidence you hadn’t considered, sitting with it honestly, and finding that your view has shifted.
That experience should feel like something. It should feel like the small surprise of a locked door turning out to be open.
What I’ve noticed in myself is that I resist updating my views most when the stakes feel personal — when the belief in question is entangled with a relationship, an identity, a long-held self-understanding. Those are precisely the areas where good thinking is hardest and most necessary.
The practice I’ve found useful is something like this: when I catch myself constructing arguments against a position I haven’t fully heard yet, I try to stop and ask why. Usually the resistance is more about me than about the argument.
Changing your mind, done honestly, is a form of integrity. It says: I care more about getting this right than about looking consistent.
That seems like the kind of person worth being.