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It's weird that people get mocked for changing their minds

197 points by bilsbie 3y ago

bhouston 3y ago
I completely agree. The hardest people to compete against are those who see what works and what doesn't and change their strategies accordingly on a regular basis -- a self correcting missile to a target. You need to orient your ego away from just being about your ideas or specific strategy to instead being a master executor whose goal is to win. It is even worse to compete against people who also study your strategy with an open mind and then incorporate the best elements of your strategy into theirs. Then it becomes a game of resources, connections, marketing and focus, rather than just a competition of ideas.
deleted 3y ago
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zdragnar 3y ago
In politics, at least, it is harder to distinguish between someone genuinely changing their mind, and someone merely switching to a now-popular position. The first is someone who is thoughtful. The latter is someone who lacks conviction and unreliable- you can't really know what you get when you vote for them.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Usually you know exactly what you’re getting - someone who will lockstep support the popular positions of the day/country/party, whatever that may become. The first is a bit more dangerous as you’re trusting them to make the best decision in the circumstances: which is better but easily second guessed.
- criley2 3y ago
  I feel this is an extremism vs moderate thing. Extremists are offended when their extremist politicians were "faking it" by only taking on popular positions to win elections, but moderates are the opposite: They are proud when a politician tells them they listen to the constituents and faithfully represent them even if the politicians personal feelings would be different than the peoples.
- someweirdperson 3y ago
  > you can't really know what you get when you vote for them You'll get that person. And politics that follow daily polls. That's almost like direct democracy, except that there's no guarantee that the peoples oppinion will be considered in all cases.
- pohl 3y ago
  OTOH, folk who use confidence & apparent conviction as signifiers of voteworthiness also can’t really know what they’re getting.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Conviction is important because you’re electing people with a mandate. If that someone runs with View X, gets elected, then switches to View Y, they have (potentially) invalidated the mandate that got them elected in the first place.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. 1. It signals that the candidate has a lack of interest in doing the actual job. In fairness, you may share the same lack of interest. It is certainly the easy way out, but nobody ever said that democracy is easy. If you really don't want democracy there are better options than trying to pretend. 2. Even if you buy into the mandate presented during an election campaign, it is going to be woefully out of date before it can be executed on. The state of the world is constantly changing. Which means you still have to put in the work to oversee the employee you hired, buying you little if you thought #1 would be a shortcut.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        > Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. In the UK there's "supposed to be" a commitment to following a party manifesto, and voting for a party is deemed to be a mandate for the manifesto. Not really binding in most cases, but it is part of the constitution. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbury-doctrine/ https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbur...
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        (1) is what elections are. It authorizes the mandate proposed by the candidate during the election cycle. Democracies aren't really about giving individuals authority to exercise their will, they're about authorizing individuals to execute the will of the people who elected the individual. I.e. it would be more proper for a candidate to pursue a platform they were elected on but which they no longer personally believe in than it would be for them to get elected on platform X then pursue platform Y. One obvious reason is that you actually can't know whether they changed their mind X -> Y or whether they knew X had a higher chance of election than Y. In either scenario, their mandate is for X, not Y, and they ought to be somewhat beholden to that. Of course not beholden against all new information, compromises, or circumstances. All of this wiggle room and the individual's propensity for wishy-washiness is considered during the election and is, in fact, part of the mandate. Some people prefer a candidate who has shown willingness to compromise, others do not. Again, in either case, candidates are expected to behave similarly to how the electorate expected them to behave. Point (2) is a valid one. The modern world changes very, very quickly and this is indeed a problem for democracies, but it's a problem only because all of this^ is true. We could simply elect tyrants (not in the pejorative sense) and they can react reflexively to the changing world, but that's not really how democracies work. This dynamic is exactly why crises (a fast-changing world) push democracies toward tyranny.
- bhouston 3y ago
  So much of Politics is theatre aimed at engaging a base large enough to get you elected. The constant threats to society that engage many, such as Gay Marriage (remember all the rushed state bans?), Sharia Law (remember that being outlawed?), Critical Race Theory (remember that?), or now Youth Transexual Treatment, are designed to engage a demographic to vote for a politician, they are not true societal threats, and they are also discarded soon as they stop working well and another potential engagement strategy arises. Also on many other non-hot topics a lot of politicians have opinions that align with their major donors. So again, they are slow to change their opinions if the money continues to flow. So politics are not good studies of how people change their minds.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    "Moral panics". All sorts of things fall under that topic. The fear runs ahead of the evidence. There may or may not be any real underlying problems, but the proposed solutions either don't engage with them or are massive over-responses. You can add various types of music to that list. UK ban on raves https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 with "repetitive beats"; more recently "drill" music.
    - LanceH 3y ago
      Moral panics. We still haven't found all those satanists. We haven't found the clowns. The Prius started working again once Toyota paid $1 billion and bolted the mat to the floor. Popcorn lung has apparently subsided. And the murder hornets were just visiting. Still going strong is anything can be "grooming". And your child can be taken from you if you look away from them even once. I really like the last one -- images of professional gangs having difficulty snatching that child because the mom is going to stop a professional gang.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        Believing the opposite extreme, that there is zero harm associated with moral panics, is necessarily true based on heuristics is arguably not optimal thinking either. Thinking better than dummies is not hard, but thinking without error is a lot harder than it seems. I think if more people started thinking in terms of both relative and absolute comparisons the world might improve. If you only think in relative terms, you are living in a dream world of sorts.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  It’s also obviously easy to see the difference. The former is able to clearly explain why they change their mind. The latter is unable other than by falling into sound bites.
- duxup 3y ago
  > merely switching to a now-popular position If their job is to be representative of the people in their community and those people have a popular opinion, that doesn’t seem to strike me as wrong necessarily.
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Problem is when you cast your vote based on a position and they change their mind after because it's not popular with donors etc.
    - duxup 3y ago
      If it isn’t popular with voters I wouldn’t call that “popular opinion”.
      - eesmith 3y ago
        "popular with donors" can be a far smaller set of people than voters.
        duxup 3y ago
        I don’t think about fits the context of what I was responding to originally.
        eesmith 3y ago
        I think zdragnar's position is that there can multiple reasons for someone to change their position; two being "genuinely changing their mind" (making them "thoughtful"), and "someone merely switching to a now-popular position" (making them "someone who lacks conviction and unreliable"). Your view seems to be the inner state doesn't matter - they still represent the will of the people they represent. morkalork's position seems to be that if someone lacks conviction and is unreliable then a problem may be they get elected then switch to represent the interests of a donor more than the electors.
      - 3y ago
- mattm 3y ago
  What do we expect from politicians? Is it better to have politicians that are thoughtful and have conviction even though it goes against what the populace demands or is it better to have politicians that understand the populace and are aligned with them in general?
  - soco 3y ago
    I argue that a politician going against what the people (aka voters) demands will not get elected in the first place. So the real work must be done before election - a matter of influence in a direction or another.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I understand your point, but it's also true that "the people" don't exactly have a unified opinion of much. Any politician will be going with what some of the people want, and against what a different group of the people want, all at the same time.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    We elect representatives because we can’t expect the populace to be in the room at every moment. The expectation is that those representatives will have some consistency, the hope is that that will mean they’ll make calls similar to the ones we’d make if we were in the room and had all the info. Consistency could also be a guard against pure power politics. Usually people get elected by appealing to some constituency, but it is uncomfortable to just say “I’m here to appeal to X demographic!” So, they try to express the interests of those demographics in terms of principles. Holding them to those principles when they don’t work in the interest of their chosen demographic can result in some pretty strong rhetoric at least.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Presidential ad: “Windsurfing” George W. Bush vs. John Kerry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo "John Kerry, whichever way the wind blows."
  - mikewarot 3y ago
    I really, really, hated this anti-intellectual movement that "W" symbolized. The complete crushing of nuance in the public sphere. Dick Cheney has a great number of sins to answer for, and this is one of them.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  Though even cynically doing an about face to a now-popular position due to the polls has some merit in that at least one can say that this politician has respect for and is listening to the population. They are capitulating their position and acknowledging that the population they seek to represent does not agree with them. They may still personally believe differently (who knows) but they are putting the opinions of the population in front of their own. What is unfortunate is that in politics we rarely see a politician talk about situations where they were wrong or made mistakes and they much prefer to turn the page and stick with their talking points of their new idea. I think there's well developed political science and strategic reasons for this. I sometimes say to myself that I'd take another look at some politician I previously disagreed with if they actually offered real apology and regret, but maybe that's not really true.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kubb 3y ago
Yeah but it's even more impressive to change your mind back and forth TWICE, because it's even harder the second time around.
- dctoedt 3y ago
  Winston Churchill on his return to the Tory Party after having spent 20 years as a Liberal: "Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/re-rat https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/re-rat
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    And with good reasons for each switch!
- someweirdperson 3y ago
  Practice makes perfect.
disruptiveink 3y ago
Agreed. In the UK, "U-turn" is nearly always used as a pejorative in the media and a cause of shame for the party doing the "U-turn": https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=government+u-turn https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=government+u-turn I believe this is one of the reasons why it seems so particularly hard to get a measure reverted here. Why go back on anything if you're guaranteed to get extra flak? Might as well just weather the storm of whatever bad idea you came up with originally.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  Most notoriously weaponised by Thatcher[1] to defend running the economy into the ground. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady's_not_for_turning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady's_not_for_turning
  - latency-guy2 3y ago
    Thatcher did a phenomenal job at strengthening the British economy.
dec0dedab0de 3y ago
Sure, but who gets mocked for changing their minds? Maybe politicians? And who is doing the mocking? Other politicians? I don't think I have ever seen it happen in person.
- randomdata 3y ago
  In the real world? Nobody. On the pretend internet? The Reddit-types act like they are all hot and bothered if something said isn't set in stone. With the blackout and other such things happening, and HN taking on more of that traffic, pg must be noticing that behaviour and confusing it with something real.
c4mpute 3y ago
Is it? I can fully understand mocking people who changed their mind after being totally sure, utterly convinced, proselytizing and annoying. If they were so sure, how could they change their minds, except by being dishonest about their surety or by being easily mislead? All good reasons for mocking them. People who weren't so sure and were honest about it are of course different. Those deserve respect for their objectivity and honesty. But those are unfortunately rare specimens.
- kodah 3y ago
  ~25 years ago I had teacher after teacher tell me (and my parents) that the time I spent learning and on computers was a total waste of time. ~1.5 years ago it was totally racist and xenophobic to think a lab escape in Wuhan could be a viable source of the pandemic. ~15 years ago being queer was something you should be quiet about. ~10 years ago a language supporting simple asynchronous paradigms, static and cross compilation was a "waste of time". ~30 years ago OOP was the only acceptable and superior paradigm. ~45 years ago psychology was equivalent to voodoo. These attitudes do not exist in a vacuum where the people that hold them hold them all. Had I ejected and mocked people from my life for them, I'd have very few friends today, and maybe a good percentage of those friends would've never changed their minds. In net, less people changing their minds yields less progress over time. It also results in an Orwellian sense of right without reason and decreased dialogue between opposing views to determine rightness; some people call this a "chilling effect". The point of life is not to be right, but to continually try to understand better. The cynicism and mockery of today's society combined with exacting tools like weaponizing shame and guilt are abhorrent and anti-progress.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    > ~1.5 years ago it was totally racist and xenophobic to think a lab escape in Wuhan could be a viable source of the pandemic. I really dislike the framing that the only objection people have ever had to the lab leak theory is that it is "racist".
    - kodah 3y ago
veave 3y ago
They don't get mocked for changing their minds, they get mocked for being wrong in the first place. >To me it seems more impressive to conclude P after previously believing ~P. Yes, we should hand out prices for being wrong.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  > Yes, we should hand out prices for being wrong. You mean fines, right? ;)
  - mikelevins 3y ago
    They probably meant prizes. They seem to be in favor of mocking people for being wrong. I don't agree. It'll result in a great deal more mockery than I have any use for.
llimos 3y ago
The mocking is usually because they don't like the person, and would attack whatever they do. Not because they don't like the idea or the fact that they changed their mind. Unfortunately a lot of public debate today is built around this.
cheeseface 3y ago
It depends. If you were hell-bent on selling snake oil for your own profit and then suddenly make a U-turn, you should definitely be called out.
hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
I think if you believed something really really stupid, or if you dishonestly said you believed something because it was in your interest, say for example crypto, then pretend to change your mind, you deserve to be ridiculed. Why is this on HN though? "People change their minds" is this deep or interesting to anyone here? This is really thin.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  It’s because Paul Graham said it. He’s one of the people that started YCombinator and Hacker News. He often says stuff without sufficient context which seems insightful but has a much more narrow application than advertised. It’s vague enough to generate a lot of discussion because everyone reads what they want into his statements. I honestly believe he is sincere but doesn’t take the time to analyze the idea.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  >This is really thin. You said it best. This tweet holds no wisdom without an example.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    That it is written by Paul Graham yet is clearly unwise seems rather interesting to me. Plus, look at all of the responses it generated in this thread that we can now analyze (or not, as the case may be).
brookst 3y ago
People get mocked when they profess a strong moral/ideological position and assert it is the only valid belief, and then change their minds. Especially if the change seems opportunistic, and even more so if they now claim their new belief is the only possible valid belief. Someone who’s open about all beliefs being provisional, respectful of opposing viewpoints, and transparent about being willing to change with no evidence is not going to be mocked. Outside of politics and other performatively dishonest arenas, of course. In those areas mockery is a weapon and it doesn’t matter how fair the criticism is.
- bambax 3y ago
  Yes. PG is using a straw man as he often does. People are derided when they change their mind constantly, because it's (justly) considered hypocritical. But it's rare to mock someone for having a true intellectual journey: starting in one place, working hard, gathering more evidence, and arriving in another.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    I don't think PG is using a straw man. Rather, he's talking about "politics and other performatively dishonest arenas", which GP excluded, as outside of those areas, mockery is kind of... stupid.
    - Retric 3y ago
      That’s what a strawman argument is. He’s attempting to artificially narrow the discussion. “I think people are generally honest.” (Strawman) “Politicians and con men make a career out of dishonesty, how can you suggest they are honest.”
    - jahnu 3y ago
      He doesn't qualify who he is talking about and in which situations. This conveniently leaves room for charitable interpretations. Which is really close to a form of sophistry, in my opinion. Reminds me of this classic Limmy sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-a5hy7QO8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-a5hy7QO8
nblrtc 3y ago
This statement is too general and I do not see that much mocking of people who genuinely change their minds. People are mostly mocked if they: 1) Change their minds all the time in an opportunistic manner (politicians, managers). 2) Change their minds whenever it benefits them financially. 3) Change their minds after they have been (almost) obviously wrong in the first place. We have seen this a lot after 2020.
bambax 3y ago
A recently deceased French journalist/philosopher, Jean-François Revel, used to say "Politicians are often praised for the mere fact of holding onto their opinions; I'm more interested in knowing what those opinions are."
yawnxyz 3y ago
Don't investors call this a "lack of conviction"? If I walked into a meeting with YC and kept changing my mind as soon as PaulG asks me a hard question... I don't think I'd get in.
- bhouston 3y ago
  I think in a VC pitch you need to have a point of view so they know what they are financing - otherwise you have nothing -- but once you get the money, you should be free to do pivots, within reason, to ensure success. You should always have a thesis (or more than one) and test it and adjust your business accordingly.
- mcv 3y ago
  Yeah, you shouldn't change your mind immediately after the first resistance to your conviction. But you shouldn't merely brush it off either. Take it seriously, think about it, consider different angles, and then change your mind if that really seems more accurate.
wryoak 3y ago
It’s just another manifestation of tribalism. Having lost ideological concord, people have to minimize that betrayal’s impact, in their own minds if in none other’s, suffering a fight or flight sensation instead of introspection.
mcv 3y ago
Some people seem to demand ideological purity and dogmatism regardless of what the facts say. In fact, some people seem to oppose facts just on principle. It's not a great time for truth and critical thinking. I don't think it's a problem if people stick to their beliefs in the absense of evidence to the contrary, as long as you do recognise evidence when it's there. I generally appreciate it when people change their mind, as long as they change it for the better, or at least base it on evidence or rational arguments. I've got tons of respect for Linus Thorvalds because he realised his attitude was a problem, and he changed it, to name just one example. I also try to change my own mind when necessary. Maybe I'm slower than I should be. For example, I've always opposed nuclear energy. It was dangerous, Chernobyl and all that, nuclear waste, nuclear proliferation. I completely agrees with the environmentalist movement that nuclear energy was a bad idea. And now I think that resistance was a mistake. It caused us to stick with fossil energy for far too long. It's weird to say that the environmentalists underestimated global warming, but they did. We did.
- c_crank 3y ago
  Was it ever a great time for truth and critical thinking? With civilization, comes pressure to conform to some standard of thinking.
mdekkers 3y ago
It happens depressingly often on projects: “the team has analyzed new, additional data which has yielded updated insights, so we are adjusting our designs and approaches accordingly” Only to be savaged by project managers (and all kinds of other management types). It’s demoralizing for the team and plain stupid, and has me rethinking my life and career choices. I’m so done with technology work, and life in general.
troelsSteegin 3y ago
It's that it's annoying to have to consider changing your mind because they changed theirs. And, it challenges your sense of their authority. Were they wrong in the first place? Should I not trust them? Who should I trust instead? Influential people are valuable for their "insight" and for their "stability" -- both.
- maksimur 3y ago
  I mostly base my sense of someone's authority on their commitment to logic and readiness to embrace evolving knowledge. By your standard, if someone could live for thousands of years, they might persist in holding the outdated belief that matter is composed of fire, air, water, and earth. Too much stability is dangerous.
mhb 3y ago
It's weird that this comment is so popular. Are these Twitter people? IRL if you're trying to convince someone of something, aren't you happy when they change their mind?
pulse7 3y ago
Politicians preach about something, collect votes, then change their minds...
BestGuess 3y ago
Don't know if it's weird or not. Maybe weird that people end up that way, being the sort to mock people? Maybe my reasoning on that kinda person is flawed so I'll write it out to share. Ain't weird because that sorta person seems to do it because it wasn't about being true or not it was about feeling smug and wanting to tell everyone else "I told you so" even if they never did. I don't know if there's words for this other than "being a jerk" or somethin. Some people want good reasons, others seem to want circling the wagons and it ain't about the reasons just about that other person being the family across the hill you been feudin with. Anyone got a better way to put it? Seems like how feudin people treat one another. "You're wrong even when you're right" sorta thing
BizarreByte 3y ago
It is weird, but our society really won't tolerate you changing you mind over something you were previously sure of, so it's better to just stick to what you believe. We live in a world where you can have your career ruined over Tweets from a decade or more ago even if you long since changed your mind. Given that you might as well hold firm and be unapologetic, because no one cares if you grew and changed as a person.
noobdev9000 3y ago
Yes it's true. Changing mind aliases with being easily suggestible.
bhk 3y ago
Examples? Maybe he's thinking about politicians being mocked when their "beliefs" are shown to be insincere.
wendyshu 3y ago
Such people are mocked if the mockers believe there is still something flawed about their reasoning and that they're likely to make the same mistake in the future.
shrikant 3y ago
(Wow, I find the sheer volume of wannabe influencer rando blue-ticks whose replies are prioritised under that tweet quite off-putting) It's not that weird if you look at the circumstances of the people who first believed ~P and then moved to P. As an example -- about 15 years back I knew someone who would pretty much eat any meat under the sun and then some, while mocking and demeaning people on vegetarian diets (me included, at the time). Now I see for the last couple of years or so that they've turned quite strongly vegan, and their Instagram feed/stories is full of anti-animal cruelty stuff -- while mocking, demeaning and shaming people who eat meat. I guess what I'm trying to say is: if I mocked this person for being a hypocrite, it's really more so because they're being an asshole. And that -- unlike Paul G's second tweet -- says more about them than it does about me, IMHO. I've no problems with people who change their mind in a thoughtful, nuanced way, while explaining what led them there; and preferably also held their original ~P position in a non-dickish manner.
- foogazi 3y ago
  > (Wow, I find the sheer volume of wannabe influencer rando blue-ticks Me too
  - bestcoder69 3y ago
    Pro-tip (though could be outdated): if your reply gets a yellow-tick reply then your post gets ranked higher than the blue ones. To make this happen, @-mention an automated customer service bot.
    - ipqk 3y ago
      Better pro-tip: stop posting on Twitter. It's run by a wannabe fascist.
      - deleted 3y ago
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      - deleted 3y ago
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weinzierl 3y ago
It's sad that people are mocked for it but changing you mind is not free, it's a burden for your family, friends, colleagues and readers. Like changing an API the burden might be worth it or not and like Postel's law: Be liberal changing your mind, but be conservative speaking your mind.
jmyeet 3y ago
This can largely be reduced to one of several motivations: 1. They mocker never liked the mockee anyway. This is just more fuel for the fire (eg [1]); 2. The mockee changed their position to one the mocker didn't like. In certain areas maybe that makes the mockee a grifter. That certainly does happen. More often than not, this simply comes down the mockee no longer being aligned with the mocker; or 3. If someone takes a genuinely principled position, many times they'll get mocked because (in the eyes of the mocker) they need to be dragged down back to their level because any form of principled action threatens to expose the mocker. It's worth noting that people are particularly tribal or brand or team oriented. There's no critical thinking involved. I'm not sure what specifically motivated pg to speak out here. I'd be curious to know. Chances are there's a specific motivation. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/21/owning-the-libs-history-trump-politics-pop-culture-477203 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/21/owning-the...
ubermonkey 3y ago
The late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys was once challenged by an interviewer about the change in his lyrics (basically, trying to catch him out for being a hypocrite given the simple party-hard themes of early work and the more mature takes on things later, including and especially about women), and he said something to the effect of "I'd rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever." I think about that a lot.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
As someone who has changed his mind fairly often when shown sufficient evidence, I’ve rarely been mocked for it. If you’re sincere and can explain why, it’s not really problems. It takes humility and a certain amount of confidence to say you were wrong. It also helps not to be a dick about your beliefs. I prefer to explain why I believe what I believe. When people know why you stand for something, your surface beliefs make more sense. I’ve made being correct more important than being right. It’s really hard to make a meaningful argument when I’ve just said I agree with you.
Verdex 3y ago
My theory is that there are three ways to "know" something: 1) Socially 2) Intuitively 3) Structurally Each with their own pros and cons. Structurally is more or less having a mathematical proof of the knowledge. Intuitively is having enough experience with a domain that your gut decisions have a very good probability of being very good. And socially is listening to peer pressure. In defense of peer pressure. Imagine a forest that is absolutely littered with abandoned ancient wells. A person walking through the forest is at constant threat of falling into a hidden well and then dying, never to be seen again. Structurally, we cannot prove or disprove the existence of ancient wells in a forest that were dug out and then forgotten long before our civilization came along. Intuitively it doesn't really matter how much experience you have with the woods. Either you enter the woods and you live or you die. Your first mistake will result in your immediate death, so you can't build up a good intuition through trial and error. But socially, we can tell our kids that the demon bear lives in the woods and it'll eat your brain if you go in there and nobody will ever see you again, so stay out. If you are going to rely not on your intuition OR you ability to reason something out, but you are going to store your knowledge "in the cloud" of society. Then you're going to tend to want reliability. If I google how to spell "peace" because I can't be bothered to remember how to spell it myself, then I'm probably going to start mocking it if it starts returning "pease". People get mocked because the mocker doesn't like that their cognitive cloud storage is acting faulty. Mocking which you'll find stops once many queried "nodes" starts to return the new result instead of just a single one.
kypro 3y ago
It's weird to me that people even seek to have opinions in the first place. That always seemed like the wrong way to view the world from the perspective of an observer with incomplete data. I mean take a topic like global warming... It might be true or false in reality, but from our perspectives as subjective observers with incomplete data we can only ever say things about global warming with degrees of confidence. Therefore I tend to think of myself as an ~80% believer in global warming and a ~20% disbeliever – evidence seems to strongly weight on the side of global warming being a real phenomena, but it's certainly not inconceivable to me that our data may be incomplete. Obviously where binary decisions need to be made I will act as if I believe global warming is real, but the point is I genuinely don't know and to say I believe in global warming as if it's rational to have a binary opinion on such things would be utterly absurd. Another upside of thinking like this is that I genuinely don't seek to have opinions on anything. I like to think of my "opinions" more as superpositions of opinions which only manifest as binaries temporarily in situations where I need to act on my beliefs as if they're binaries. I also like to remind myself that my own beliefs are simply the net of all opinions held by others with my own weightings – like a softmax output or something. Therefore I hold all political positions and all ideologies to some degree. For example, I consider myself as being both someone who supports Brexit and someone who doesn't and I think this makes me more open and understanding when it comes to controversial opinions. At least I seem to find it very easy to incorporate new positions or data without the typical mental blockers because something is labeled a "x" or "y" talking point. If someone makes a good point which I hadn't considered before I'll just be like, "oh that's interesting" and then it's part of my beliefs automatically. That wouldn't necessarily mean that the ideology that motivated that point would manifest when I'm forced to make binary decisions, and in this way I can easily view the majority of Brexit talking points as truthy without actually voting Brexit. On the negatives people have said I'm schizophrenic with my beliefs because I'm fine with manifesting different binary opinions from week to week. But I think I'd argue it's probably more rational to do that when operating with a low level of certainty. I mean what's the alternative? Having a binary opinion the pros and cons of something as nuanced as freedom vs security? That would be equally absurd. If you force me to take to have a binary opinion it will be inconsistent.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
It's not weird at all, it's basically normal human group psychology, as near as I can tell, looking through history. Your in group has a set of beliefs, the out group has other beliefs, it's what makes them others and worth competing against/destroying if needed. The major societal improvement that is science gives one a decent algorithm for changing ones mind. I believe being able to point at the algorithm is a very overlooked part of why we began to be able to change our minds more effectively and less violently as a society.
dumbmrblah 3y ago
I rather be right than consistent.
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
I thought graham got banned from twitter
- snacktaster 3y ago
  He came slinking back just like they all did. Removed the mastodon link from his profile so they would unban his account.
seydor 3y ago
It s even more weird that people care if they are being mocked for their thoughts
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swayvil 3y ago
It takes me weeks of ambivalating to come up with one halfway decent idea. I edit my posts so much that I've been accused of deceit. Strong opinions are oxymoronic. Like heavy feathers.
- rflrob 3y ago
  You may be pleased to know that “essay” literally means “attempt”. The idea being that you aren’t sure exactly what you believe, so you’re going to attempt to write it down and see if that helps to clarify it for yourself and others.
distcs 3y ago
> It's weird that people get mocked for changing their minds. Do they? It could be that I live in a bubble due to the profession I am in and the environment and culture I have grown up in. But in the circle I live in, people are appreciated when they change their minds. It is seen as a sign of growth. Is it really that common for people to get mocked for changing their minds?
chasing 3y ago
This is the sort of vague comment that sounds observant and smart but absent of any kind of context is absolutely meaningless. I’ve been sort of lumping this stuff into the category of “self-help glurge” or “productivity glurge” lately. I’m sure there’s a better term. Pithy little vapid one-liners spit out by those who see themselves as thought leaders, designed to give their followers an empty little social/emotional boost. So much of Twitter and especially LinkedIn is full of this stuff lately.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  this is why i firmly believe paulg's twitter account is actually operated by openai there is an azure instance somewhere with the label DO_NOT_TERMINATE that has a cloud_init script which does a pip install paulg && paulg -d
- koheripbal 3y ago
  The reality is that people are mocked when they hold political beliefs that mockers don't share. Political commentary online is neither fair nor honest. It creates negative value for any platform. You can always find a way to mock someone, for even the most common and innocent behaviors.
  - chasing 3y ago
    That’s not what he wrote — you’re filling in his empty vessel of a comment with context you’ve created. And we can certainly debate how people talk about politics online, but that’s way way more complicated and nuanced of a topic than “it’s weird when people get mocked for changing their mind.” Weird how? What does that even mean? What does “mocked” mean? Someone says something nasty on Twitter? Your kids make fun of you at dinner? What topic are you changing your mind about? A zoning issue in the town in which you live? Or have you suddenly realized that LGBTQ+ folks deserve rights after decades of people trying to convince you? Or did you listen to Joe Rogan and now you think vaccines contain tracking chips that let George Soros know when you use the bathroom? Context!
  - gochi 3y ago
    >You can always find a way to mock someone, for even the most common and innocent behaviors. Thus ancient greek comedy and how influential it was in public opinion!
oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
Yeah, people don't get mocked for evaluating new evidence and reaching a new conclusion based upon it. What they get mocked for is: a) Professing to believe in something so strongly that they are unwilling to listen to good evidence to the contrary, then later changing their mind. b) Making promises that they later break. This is the really common one we see from politicians — in the UK, at least. Promise something to get into power, then do a complete about-turn when it suits them, not because of new insight gained but because of perceived personal benefits from changing 'opinion'.
Hasz 3y ago
Straw man argument at best. This is anecdotal, but ridicule for reevaluating a position is not at all common in my experience. When people tie their identities to a specific idea, it becomes hard to change that idea as they or the idea evolve. Personally, I always try to dissociate the idea from the person; I really like the motto of “always happy to adopt a better idea”. Helps reduce the ego burden of switching.
mindvirus 3y ago
To make this fun: What's a strong belief that you used to have, that you don't have anymore? Especially ones that go counter to mainstream narrative. Two for me (might start some fights, but it's all in good fun): - I generally believed that Python was great for building big systems, but having worked on some very large Python codebases, I've become a real zealot for a good type system, especially when refactoring and maintenance becomes a major issue. - Having worked with and maintained a couple of event sourced systems, I've become much less of a purist, given how hard they are to maintain and build on. So I went from "event sourcing is awesome" to "YAGNI".
talkingtab 3y ago
There should be another term in addition to cargo cult thinking - something like {college,education,expert} cult. This is only an issue when it becomes an article of belief that "what we are told is true". In other words when you decide that your own experience, senses and thoughts are not valid. As humans we cannot re-invent the wheel everyday. So we rely on google maps, even when that map tells us drive 200 miles north to Gray, Maine, do u-turn, come back and then drive to Montreal. We need to be able to trust information. I am somewhat convinced that we do not change our minds because of two problems. The first is cascading loss of trust. If I can't trust google maps in that case, can I ever trust it? Or any other map software? Or any software? Or the internet? This is too hard. The other problem is who to trust. If you don't trust that the US government is representing your interest and is a democracy, then who do you trust? Well we have the answer. Our ability to change our mind is our ability to adapt. I have recently been pondering whether html-css is a completely outdated way to build a web UI. What about threejs, react-three, etc. I can think about it without problem in the abstract. But what happens to all the work I have done and am doing if I change my mind? And perhaps most influential is "What will people think of me?" A person's ability to trust their own thinking as opposed to the current cult thinking is, to me, the best indicator of their intellectual value - completely orthogonal to their degree/education. Edit: Oh and I can almost hear people thinking I am wrong. That is not the issue. The question is what if I am right? There is a YC video some place where a YC person talks about Silicon Valley as a place where when people hear an idea they don't go to "wrong/right" they go to what if it is true? Or partly true, or ...
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greedo 3y ago
I think this comes down to people commenting out of their area of expertise. I remember hearing some expert (during the COVID outbreak) state that while they'd like to comment on some issue, they didn't have any particular expertise in the subject. It was refreshing not to have someone bullshitting. Humans love facts, knowledge, and particularly answers to their questions and concerns, even when there are no good answers. Yet there's always someone willing to provide an answer, even when it's fundamentally wrong.
golemotron 3y ago
It isn't weird at all. People form status hierarchies based upon whom they can trust. At a primal level, constancy gives people feelings of security. This may be irrational, and it may not be the way we want people to be, but that is beside the point. It's a very human thing and a core part of politics, religion and interpersonal relations.
jerf 3y ago
There is actually some rational ground for being suspicious of public figures who change their minds in their area of putative expertise. Nominally, the job of Secretary of the X is to be an expert in X. They should have done the work to come to the correct opinions, and be able to defend them. While in theory I wouldn't want them to hold that opinion at all costs, it should be a rare event that causes them to radically change their opinions. It should take some very substantial stuff to do it. They shouldn't be someone who can be blown by the wind and a couple of stray facts, because they should be sitting on a lot more facts that support their position. Now, in reality this is all sorts of naive and the Secretary of the X was absolutely certainly not put there simply because they're the best at X. We're lucky if that was even a consideration and if they can even follow the most basic issues in field X. Nevertheless, despite the fact a number of people know that the nominal level of politics is far from the only one, it remains an important one. The nominal level of politics becomes more important the larger the group of people, and national scale is just about the largest relevant scale. Even so, even in small environments I find the nominal level of politics remains important even when every single participant knows everyone else is putting on a political show for everyone else. It's weird to me, but while analyzing that surface level is nowhere near sufficient to understand what is going on, it never ceases being relevant. So it remains relevant for people in positions of authority to have relatively stable positions. Otherwise they're penetrating that nominal level of politics, and that's a very dangerous thing for them to do. Despite the fact we visibly have a lot of people in charge of X who know basically nothing about X and are clearly there for purely political reasons, if they actually publicly admitted they know nothing about X and they're just there because of their political skill, they'd be out of a job within the week. This argument just applies to authority figures. But then, in my experience, in real life changing your mind is less of a deal; sure, that one guy or whatever might call you out on it but it is not intrinsically a huge deal. (The resulting rearrangement of relationships may be a big deal, but I wouldn't call that being mocked for changing your mind, that's a consquence of changing circumstances.)
tlogan 3y ago
The nature of the “change their mind” in question is critical. If it pertains to business leadership or entrepreneurship, a change of mind is perfectly acceptable and even desirable. The issue arises when people “change their mind” regarding some moral or ideological stances solely for their benefit, especially when such changes impact others. Because maintaining the old stance would adversely affect them - that is when mockery should start. Also labeling this as merely "changing their minds" is a misleading oversimplification, a tactic used to rationalize unsavory behaviors. However, it's important to remember that the world isn't that simple; it's a complex tapestry of nuances and gray areas.
javier_e06 3y ago
Every year I pick a different NFL team to go all the way. They way I see it if the players can so can I.
tlogan 3y ago
The tweet should be “It is weird that people who are not self-serving hypocrites get mocked for changing their minds”. But in that case the tweet will not be true…
jenkstom 3y ago
Not when you believe that the absolute standard for truth was written thousands of years ago and never has and never will change. Forget historical truth, we already know that's absurd, but plenty of people think that way.
ausbah 3y ago
this is kind a bad take. like other comments say, genuine intellectual journey is great on most every topic. yet I'm not going to give points, much less MORE points, to someone who use to be a bigot, conspiracy theorist, or any other similar flavor of belief
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jsdeveloper 3y ago
One should stay anonymous on THE INTERNET if they feel offended. When you put our bladder in front of wolves , you should not argue about wolves are wrong. If you out your personal stuff on internet, be it just your name you invited people to disect it!
mola 3y ago
I find it weird that such lazy superficial thinkers are the rulers of our age.
lanstin 3y ago
Doesn't anyone have beliefs that are not modeled best by booleans? I intuitively like to use trivalent logic "true/false/not known" but the Bayesian reals from 0 to 1 is also pretty useful. Does one not continually adjust the weights assigned to all manner of propositions? For that matter, doesn't one adjust the meaning assigned to vague propositions as the specifics of the case become clearer? ("I thought DRY meant have your code look like gzip'ed output, but now I see it means after spotting a pattern, take a moment to think about it and see if there's not some nice coherent abstraction you are brushing against and could profitably use?")
- mistermann 3y ago
  > I intuitively like to use trivalent logic "true/false/not known" but the Bayesian reals from 0 to 1 is also pretty useful. In my experience less than 10% of people think in non-binary, non-heuristic-based forms on these and similar topics, and even Rationalists fare not much better.
  - lanstin 3y ago
    I think it is a more productive tweak to thinking to understand beliefs as not being fully true or fully false than to believe that one can be purely rational in one’s actions or beliefs.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      I mostly agree, although the meme-based beliefs about the simplistic notion that it is ~impossible to be "purely rational in one’s actions or beliefs" is highly inaccurate imho. I don't disagree that people can't currently do it, but then consider how much we've improved when it comes to things like racism. Maybe if we actually tried to be rational (rather than patting ourselves on the back as is a popular practice here and in Rationalist and Scientific communities) we could make similar progress.
      - lanstin 3y ago
        I find it a category error to ask reason for a why do one thing over another. Our animal nature gives us motivation which we use reason to help. Not that it isn’t usually a benefit to fulfilling our motivations to have our reason finely honed.
johnea 3y ago
It's weird that people use the twitverse...
coldtea 3y ago
It's not weird to mock people "changing their minds" if you believe that their change of minds is just them faking it to get on with the prevailing political/social wind or to jump on a bandwaggon for profit.
biggoodwolf 3y ago
It hard for Protestants or crypto-Protestants (i.e. many atheists from Protestant backgrounds) to accept someone changing their minds.
rdtsc 3y ago
Public posting of positions, say on Twitter or Facebook, makes it less likely they would even attempt to change their mind. They will rationalize very hard to keep their previous position. I call this “Twitterification” of beliefs. This is amplified by how logical, or generally intellectually superior one feels compared to others. An extra bonus if they acted very sure, mocked, or dismissed some opposing beliefs.
ineedasername 3y ago
Controversial answer (maybe): Not changing you mind may be appropriate* (I'll explain [1]) though it also reminds me of a famous and apt observation [2]. [1] New facts do not always permit a change of mind because they they may support. indisputable but incompatible explanations/opinions/points of view.More facts are needed to reconcile things. For this reason a person should strive to cultivate the skill of believing positions at the some time opinions, wholly incompatible. This is difficult. It takes effort and practice to partition your mind in a way that separates belief in one viewpoint from the belief in the other. It is often uncomfortable [3], and for me I can only truly achieve it for brief moments. Nonetheless it's an extremely useful skill to navigate encountering new information & consider another person's viewpoint when it contradicts my own. Ideally new information eventually comes along that explains how both can be true at the time. [2] Quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" --Ralph Waldo Emerson [3] To reveal some very personal details, I was helped in honing this skill by having to deal with mental health issues that force completely irrational thoughts on me at the same time that I attempt, with varying degrees of success, to bring down a hammer of rational reasoning and logic against those thoughts. The former makes for a tortuous experience in itself, while the later imposes an very strange but helpful contradictory belief with both held in my head simultaneously.
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exabrial 3y ago
A mature adult is capable their mind. A childish egoist does not for fear of their pride.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
He's right. As some point in my life I ceased to believe that you are supposed to find your beliefs and defend them to the death, even in the face of new evidence. Of course I didn't articulate it that way in those days. I think some people become enlightened with acceptance of the fact that theyre probably wrong, they probably don't know what about, you have to live life believing you're right (otherwise you wouldn't believe anything) and always be ready to accept when you're wrong about something. Once this realization comes, your beliefs become detached from your ego. I make a point to reserve the right to change my mind about anything at any point in time. I can't grow as a person otherwise. I don't owe anyone an apology for that, or for being wrong about something. And I am willing to consider any viewpoint, any at all, even some that are unpallatable to me or someone else. I haven't internalized or acknowledged the correctness of many of those extreme viewpoints because my faculty of reason has led me to disbelieve many of them, but I do detach myself when discussing or considering them. I'm after the truth. I want to be right, not feel right, and that means learning, which means being OK with being wrong and changing your mind when appropriate.
QuantumGood 3y ago
It's weird that people are expected to have made up their mind. "I've been looking into this for awhile, here's what I've found so far" is much closer to the truth.

197 points by bilsbie 3y ago

I completely agree. The hardest people to compete against are those who see what works and what doesn't and change their strategies accordingly on a regular basis -- a self correcting missile to a target. You need to orient your ego away from just being about your ideas or specific strategy to instead being a master executor whose goal is to win. It is even worse to compete against people who also study your strategy with an open mind and then incorporate the best elements of your strategy into theirs. Then it becomes a game of resources, connections, marketing and focus, rather than just a competition of ideas.

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zdragnar 3y ago

In politics, at least, it is harder to distinguish between someone genuinely changing their mind, and someone merely switching to a now-popular position. The first is someone who is thoughtful. The latter is someone who lacks conviction and unreliable- you can't really know what you get when you vote for them.

bombcar 3y ago
Usually you know exactly what you’re getting - someone who will lockstep support the popular positions of the day/country/party, whatever that may become. The first is a bit more dangerous as you’re trusting them to make the best decision in the circumstances: which is better but easily second guessed.
criley2 3y ago
I feel this is an extremism vs moderate thing. Extremists are offended when their extremist politicians were "faking it" by only taking on popular positions to win elections, but moderates are the opposite: They are proud when a politician tells them they listen to the constituents and faithfully represent them even if the politicians personal feelings would be different than the peoples.
someweirdperson 3y ago
> you can't really know what you get when you vote for them You'll get that person. And politics that follow daily polls. That's almost like direct democracy, except that there's no guarantee that the peoples oppinion will be considered in all cases.
pohl 3y ago
OTOH, folk who use confidence & apparent conviction as signifiers of voteworthiness also can’t really know what they’re getting.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Conviction is important because you’re electing people with a mandate. If that someone runs with View X, gets elected, then switches to View Y, they have (potentially) invalidated the mandate that got them elected in the first place.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. 1. It signals that the candidate has a lack of interest in doing the actual job. In fairness, you may share the same lack of interest. It is certainly the easy way out, but nobody ever said that democracy is easy. If you really don't want democracy there are better options than trying to pretend. 2. Even if you buy into the mandate presented during an election campaign, it is going to be woefully out of date before it can be executed on. The state of the world is constantly changing. Which means you still have to put in the work to oversee the employee you hired, buying you little if you thought #1 would be a shortcut.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. In the UK there's "supposed to be" a commitment to following a party manifesto, and voting for a party is deemed to be a mandate for the manifesto. Not really binding in most cases, but it is part of the constitution. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbury-doctrine/ https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbur...
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      (1) is what elections are. It authorizes the mandate proposed by the candidate during the election cycle. Democracies aren't really about giving individuals authority to exercise their will, they're about authorizing individuals to execute the will of the people who elected the individual. I.e. it would be more proper for a candidate to pursue a platform they were elected on but which they no longer personally believe in than it would be for them to get elected on platform X then pursue platform Y. One obvious reason is that you actually can't know whether they changed their mind X -> Y or whether they knew X had a higher chance of election than Y. In either scenario, their mandate is for X, not Y, and they ought to be somewhat beholden to that. Of course not beholden against all new information, compromises, or circumstances. All of this wiggle room and the individual's propensity for wishy-washiness is considered during the election and is, in fact, part of the mandate. Some people prefer a candidate who has shown willingness to compromise, others do not. Again, in either case, candidates are expected to behave similarly to how the electorate expected them to behave. Point (2) is a valid one. The modern world changes very, very quickly and this is indeed a problem for democracies, but it's a problem only because all of this^ is true. We could simply elect tyrants (not in the pejorative sense) and they can react reflexively to the changing world, but that's not really how democracies work. This dynamic is exactly why crises (a fast-changing world) push democracies toward tyranny.
bhouston 3y ago
So much of Politics is theatre aimed at engaging a base large enough to get you elected. The constant threats to society that engage many, such as Gay Marriage (remember all the rushed state bans?), Sharia Law (remember that being outlawed?), Critical Race Theory (remember that?), or now Youth Transexual Treatment, are designed to engage a demographic to vote for a politician, they are not true societal threats, and they are also discarded soon as they stop working well and another potential engagement strategy arises. Also on many other non-hot topics a lot of politicians have opinions that align with their major donors. So again, they are slow to change their opinions if the money continues to flow. So politics are not good studies of how people change their minds.
- pjc50 3y ago
  "Moral panics". All sorts of things fall under that topic. The fear runs ahead of the evidence. There may or may not be any real underlying problems, but the proposed solutions either don't engage with them or are massive over-responses. You can add various types of music to that list. UK ban on raves https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 with "repetitive beats"; more recently "drill" music.
  - LanceH 3y ago
    Moral panics. We still haven't found all those satanists. We haven't found the clowns. The Prius started working again once Toyota paid $1 billion and bolted the mat to the floor. Popcorn lung has apparently subsided. And the murder hornets were just visiting. Still going strong is anything can be "grooming". And your child can be taken from you if you look away from them even once. I really like the last one -- images of professional gangs having difficulty snatching that child because the mom is going to stop a professional gang.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      Believing the opposite extreme, that there is zero harm associated with moral panics, is necessarily true based on heuristics is arguably not optimal thinking either. Thinking better than dummies is not hard, but thinking without error is a lot harder than it seems. I think if more people started thinking in terms of both relative and absolute comparisons the world might improve. If you only think in relative terms, you are living in a dream world of sorts.
rhaway84773 3y ago
It’s also obviously easy to see the difference. The former is able to clearly explain why they change their mind. The latter is unable other than by falling into sound bites.
duxup 3y ago
> merely switching to a now-popular position If their job is to be representative of the people in their community and those people have a popular opinion, that doesn’t seem to strike me as wrong necessarily.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Problem is when you cast your vote based on a position and they change their mind after because it's not popular with donors etc.
  - duxup 3y ago
    If it isn’t popular with voters I wouldn’t call that “popular opinion”.
    - eesmith 3y ago
      "popular with donors" can be a far smaller set of people than voters.
      - duxup 3y ago
        I don’t think about fits the context of what I was responding to originally.
        eesmith 3y ago
        I think zdragnar's position is that there can multiple reasons for someone to change their position; two being "genuinely changing their mind" (making them "thoughtful"), and "someone merely switching to a now-popular position" (making them "someone who lacks conviction and unreliable"). Your view seems to be the inner state doesn't matter - they still represent the will of the people they represent. morkalork's position seems to be that if someone lacks conviction and is unreliable then a problem may be they get elected then switch to represent the interests of a donor more than the electors.
    - 3y ago
mattm 3y ago
What do we expect from politicians? Is it better to have politicians that are thoughtful and have conviction even though it goes against what the populace demands or is it better to have politicians that understand the populace and are aligned with them in general?
- soco 3y ago
  I argue that a politician going against what the people (aka voters) demands will not get elected in the first place. So the real work must be done before election - a matter of influence in a direction or another.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I understand your point, but it's also true that "the people" don't exactly have a unified opinion of much. Any politician will be going with what some of the people want, and against what a different group of the people want, all at the same time.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  We elect representatives because we can’t expect the populace to be in the room at every moment. The expectation is that those representatives will have some consistency, the hope is that that will mean they’ll make calls similar to the ones we’d make if we were in the room and had all the info. Consistency could also be a guard against pure power politics. Usually people get elected by appealing to some constituency, but it is uncomfortable to just say “I’m here to appeal to X demographic!” So, they try to express the interests of those demographics in terms of principles. Holding them to those principles when they don’t work in the interest of their chosen demographic can result in some pretty strong rhetoric at least.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Presidential ad: “Windsurfing” George W. Bush vs. John Kerry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo "John Kerry, whichever way the wind blows."
- mikewarot 3y ago
  I really, really, hated this anti-intellectual movement that "W" symbolized. The complete crushing of nuance in the public sphere. Dick Cheney has a great number of sins to answer for, and this is one of them.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
Though even cynically doing an about face to a now-popular position due to the polls has some merit in that at least one can say that this politician has respect for and is listening to the population. They are capitulating their position and acknowledging that the population they seek to represent does not agree with them. They may still personally believe differently (who knows) but they are putting the opinions of the population in front of their own. What is unfortunate is that in politics we rarely see a politician talk about situations where they were wrong or made mistakes and they much prefer to turn the page and stick with their talking points of their new idea. I think there's well developed political science and strategic reasons for this. I sometimes say to myself that I'd take another look at some politician I previously disagreed with if they actually offered real apology and regret, but maybe that's not really true.
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kubb 3y ago

Yeah but it's even more impressive to change your mind back and forth TWICE, because it's even harder the second time around.

dctoedt 3y ago
Winston Churchill on his return to the Tory Party after having spent 20 years as a Liberal: "Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/re-rat https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/re-rat
- ethanbond 3y ago
  And with good reasons for each switch!
someweirdperson 3y ago
Practice makes perfect.

disruptiveink 3y ago

Agreed. In the UK, "U-turn" is nearly always used as a pejorative in the media and a cause of shame for the party doing the "U-turn": https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=government+u-turn https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=government+u-turn I believe this is one of the reasons why it seems so particularly hard to get a measure reverted here. Why go back on anything if you're guaranteed to get extra flak? Might as well just weather the storm of whatever bad idea you came up with originally.

zimpenfish 3y ago
Most notoriously weaponised by Thatcher[1] to defend running the economy into the ground. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady's_not_for_turning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady's_not_for_turning
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  Thatcher did a phenomenal job at strengthening the British economy.

dec0dedab0de 3y ago

Sure, but who gets mocked for changing their minds? Maybe politicians? And who is doing the mocking? Other politicians? I don't think I have ever seen it happen in person.

randomdata 3y ago
In the real world? Nobody. On the pretend internet? The Reddit-types act like they are all hot and bothered if something said isn't set in stone. With the blackout and other such things happening, and HN taking on more of that traffic, pg must be noticing that behaviour and confusing it with something real.

c4mpute 3y ago

Is it? I can fully understand mocking people who changed their mind after being totally sure, utterly convinced, proselytizing and annoying. If they were so sure, how could they change their minds, except by being dishonest about their surety or by being easily mislead? All good reasons for mocking them. People who weren't so sure and were honest about it are of course different. Those deserve respect for their objectivity and honesty. But those are unfortunately rare specimens.

kodah 3y ago
~25 years ago I had teacher after teacher tell me (and my parents) that the time I spent learning and on computers was a total waste of time. ~1.5 years ago it was totally racist and xenophobic to think a lab escape in Wuhan could be a viable source of the pandemic. ~15 years ago being queer was something you should be quiet about. ~10 years ago a language supporting simple asynchronous paradigms, static and cross compilation was a "waste of time". ~30 years ago OOP was the only acceptable and superior paradigm. ~45 years ago psychology was equivalent to voodoo. These attitudes do not exist in a vacuum where the people that hold them hold them all. Had I ejected and mocked people from my life for them, I'd have very few friends today, and maybe a good percentage of those friends would've never changed their minds. In net, less people changing their minds yields less progress over time. It also results in an Orwellian sense of right without reason and decreased dialogue between opposing views to determine rightness; some people call this a "chilling effect". The point of life is not to be right, but to continually try to understand better. The cynicism and mockery of today's society combined with exacting tools like weaponizing shame and guilt are abhorrent and anti-progress.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  > ~1.5 years ago it was totally racist and xenophobic to think a lab escape in Wuhan could be a viable source of the pandemic. I really dislike the framing that the only objection people have ever had to the lab leak theory is that it is "racist".
  - kodah 3y ago

veave 3y ago

They don't get mocked for changing their minds, they get mocked for being wrong in the first place. >To me it seems more impressive to conclude P after previously believing ~P. Yes, we should hand out prices for being wrong.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
> Yes, we should hand out prices for being wrong. You mean fines, right? ;)
- mikelevins 3y ago
  They probably meant prizes. They seem to be in favor of mocking people for being wrong. I don't agree. It'll result in a great deal more mockery than I have any use for.

llimos 3y ago

The mocking is usually because they don't like the person, and would attack whatever they do. Not because they don't like the idea or the fact that they changed their mind. Unfortunately a lot of public debate today is built around this.

cheeseface 3y ago

It depends. If you were hell-bent on selling snake oil for your own profit and then suddenly make a U-turn, you should definitely be called out.

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago

I think if you believed something really really stupid, or if you dishonestly said you believed something because it was in your interest, say for example crypto, then pretend to change your mind, you deserve to be ridiculed. Why is this on HN though? "People change their minds" is this deep or interesting to anyone here? This is really thin.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
It’s because Paul Graham said it. He’s one of the people that started YCombinator and Hacker News. He often says stuff without sufficient context which seems insightful but has a much more narrow application than advertised. It’s vague enough to generate a lot of discussion because everyone reads what they want into his statements. I honestly believe he is sincere but doesn’t take the time to analyze the idea.
1970-01-01 3y ago
>This is really thin. You said it best. This tweet holds no wisdom without an example.
- mistermann 3y ago
  That it is written by Paul Graham yet is clearly unwise seems rather interesting to me. Plus, look at all of the responses it generated in this thread that we can now analyze (or not, as the case may be).

brookst 3y ago

People get mocked when they profess a strong moral/ideological position and assert it is the only valid belief, and then change their minds. Especially if the change seems opportunistic, and even more so if they now claim their new belief is the only possible valid belief. Someone who’s open about all beliefs being provisional, respectful of opposing viewpoints, and transparent about being willing to change with no evidence is not going to be mocked. Outside of politics and other performatively dishonest arenas, of course. In those areas mockery is a weapon and it doesn’t matter how fair the criticism is.

bambax 3y ago
Yes. PG is using a straw man as he often does. People are derided when they change their mind constantly, because it's (justly) considered hypocritical. But it's rare to mock someone for having a true intellectual journey: starting in one place, working hard, gathering more evidence, and arriving in another.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  I don't think PG is using a straw man. Rather, he's talking about "politics and other performatively dishonest arenas", which GP excluded, as outside of those areas, mockery is kind of... stupid.
  - Retric 3y ago
    That’s what a strawman argument is. He’s attempting to artificially narrow the discussion. “I think people are generally honest.” (Strawman) “Politicians and con men make a career out of dishonesty, how can you suggest they are honest.”
  - jahnu 3y ago
    He doesn't qualify who he is talking about and in which situations. This conveniently leaves room for charitable interpretations. Which is really close to a form of sophistry, in my opinion. Reminds me of this classic Limmy sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-a5hy7QO8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-a5hy7QO8

nblrtc 3y ago

This statement is too general and I do not see that much mocking of people who genuinely change their minds. People are mostly mocked if they: 1) Change their minds all the time in an opportunistic manner (politicians, managers). 2) Change their minds whenever it benefits them financially. 3) Change their minds after they have been (almost) obviously wrong in the first place. We have seen this a lot after 2020.

bambax 3y ago

A recently deceased French journalist/philosopher, Jean-François Revel, used to say "Politicians are often praised for the mere fact of holding onto their opinions; I'm more interested in knowing what those opinions are."

yawnxyz 3y ago

Don't investors call this a "lack of conviction"? If I walked into a meeting with YC and kept changing my mind as soon as PaulG asks me a hard question... I don't think I'd get in.

bhouston 3y ago
I think in a VC pitch you need to have a point of view so they know what they are financing - otherwise you have nothing -- but once you get the money, you should be free to do pivots, within reason, to ensure success. You should always have a thesis (or more than one) and test it and adjust your business accordingly.
mcv 3y ago
Yeah, you shouldn't change your mind immediately after the first resistance to your conviction. But you shouldn't merely brush it off either. Take it seriously, think about it, consider different angles, and then change your mind if that really seems more accurate.

wryoak 3y ago

It’s just another manifestation of tribalism. Having lost ideological concord, people have to minimize that betrayal’s impact, in their own minds if in none other’s, suffering a fight or flight sensation instead of introspection.

mcv 3y ago

Some people seem to demand ideological purity and dogmatism regardless of what the facts say. In fact, some people seem to oppose facts just on principle. It's not a great time for truth and critical thinking. I don't think it's a problem if people stick to their beliefs in the absense of evidence to the contrary, as long as you do recognise evidence when it's there. I generally appreciate it when people change their mind, as long as they change it for the better, or at least base it on evidence or rational arguments. I've got tons of respect for Linus Thorvalds because he realised his attitude was a problem, and he changed it, to name just one example. I also try to change my own mind when necessary. Maybe I'm slower than I should be. For example, I've always opposed nuclear energy. It was dangerous, Chernobyl and all that, nuclear waste, nuclear proliferation. I completely agrees with the environmentalist movement that nuclear energy was a bad idea. And now I think that resistance was a mistake. It caused us to stick with fossil energy for far too long. It's weird to say that the environmentalists underestimated global warming, but they did. We did.

c_crank 3y ago
Was it ever a great time for truth and critical thinking? With civilization, comes pressure to conform to some standard of thinking.

mdekkers 3y ago

It happens depressingly often on projects: “the team has analyzed new, additional data which has yielded updated insights, so we are adjusting our designs and approaches accordingly” Only to be savaged by project managers (and all kinds of other management types). It’s demoralizing for the team and plain stupid, and has me rethinking my life and career choices. I’m so done with technology work, and life in general.

troelsSteegin 3y ago

It's that it's annoying to have to consider changing your mind because they changed theirs. And, it challenges your sense of their authority. Were they wrong in the first place? Should I not trust them? Who should I trust instead? Influential people are valuable for their "insight" and for their "stability" -- both.

maksimur 3y ago
I mostly base my sense of someone's authority on their commitment to logic and readiness to embrace evolving knowledge. By your standard, if someone could live for thousands of years, they might persist in holding the outdated belief that matter is composed of fire, air, water, and earth. Too much stability is dangerous.

mhb 3y ago

It's weird that this comment is so popular. Are these Twitter people? IRL if you're trying to convince someone of something, aren't you happy when they change their mind?

pulse7 3y ago

Politicians preach about something, collect votes, then change their minds...

BestGuess 3y ago

Don't know if it's weird or not. Maybe weird that people end up that way, being the sort to mock people? Maybe my reasoning on that kinda person is flawed so I'll write it out to share. Ain't weird because that sorta person seems to do it because it wasn't about being true or not it was about feeling smug and wanting to tell everyone else "I told you so" even if they never did. I don't know if there's words for this other than "being a jerk" or somethin. Some people want good reasons, others seem to want circling the wagons and it ain't about the reasons just about that other person being the family across the hill you been feudin with. Anyone got a better way to put it? Seems like how feudin people treat one another. "You're wrong even when you're right" sorta thing

BizarreByte 3y ago

It is weird, but our society really won't tolerate you changing you mind over something you were previously sure of, so it's better to just stick to what you believe. We live in a world where you can have your career ruined over Tweets from a decade or more ago even if you long since changed your mind. Given that you might as well hold firm and be unapologetic, because no one cares if you grew and changed as a person.

noobdev9000 3y ago

Yes it's true. Changing mind aliases with being easily suggestible.

bhk 3y ago

Examples? Maybe he's thinking about politicians being mocked when their "beliefs" are shown to be insincere.

wendyshu 3y ago

Such people are mocked if the mockers believe there is still something flawed about their reasoning and that they're likely to make the same mistake in the future.

shrikant 3y ago

(Wow, I find the sheer volume of wannabe influencer rando blue-ticks whose replies are prioritised under that tweet quite off-putting) It's not that weird if you look at the circumstances of the people who first believed ~P and then moved to P. As an example -- about 15 years back I knew someone who would pretty much eat any meat under the sun and then some, while mocking and demeaning people on vegetarian diets (me included, at the time). Now I see for the last couple of years or so that they've turned quite strongly vegan, and their Instagram feed/stories is full of anti-animal cruelty stuff -- while mocking, demeaning and shaming people who eat meat. I guess what I'm trying to say is: if I mocked this person for being a hypocrite, it's really more so because they're being an asshole. And that -- unlike Paul G's second tweet -- says more about them than it does about me, IMHO. I've no problems with people who change their mind in a thoughtful, nuanced way, while explaining what led them there; and preferably also held their original ~P position in a non-dickish manner.

foogazi 3y ago
> (Wow, I find the sheer volume of wannabe influencer rando blue-ticks Me too
- bestcoder69 3y ago
  Pro-tip (though could be outdated): if your reply gets a yellow-tick reply then your post gets ranked higher than the blue ones. To make this happen, @-mention an automated customer service bot.
  - ipqk 3y ago
    Better pro-tip: stop posting on Twitter. It's run by a wannabe fascist.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - deleted 3y ago
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weinzierl 3y ago

It's sad that people are mocked for it but changing you mind is not free, it's a burden for your family, friends, colleagues and readers. Like changing an API the burden might be worth it or not and like Postel's law: Be liberal changing your mind, but be conservative speaking your mind.

jmyeet 3y ago

This can largely be reduced to one of several motivations: 1. They mocker never liked the mockee anyway. This is just more fuel for the fire (eg [1]); 2. The mockee changed their position to one the mocker didn't like. In certain areas maybe that makes the mockee a grifter. That certainly does happen. More often than not, this simply comes down the mockee no longer being aligned with the mocker; or 3. If someone takes a genuinely principled position, many times they'll get mocked because (in the eyes of the mocker) they need to be dragged down back to their level because any form of principled action threatens to expose the mocker. It's worth noting that people are particularly tribal or brand or team oriented. There's no critical thinking involved. I'm not sure what specifically motivated pg to speak out here. I'd be curious to know. Chances are there's a specific motivation. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/21/owning-the-libs-history-trump-politics-pop-culture-477203 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/21/owning-the...

ubermonkey 3y ago

The late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys was once challenged by an interviewer about the change in his lyrics (basically, trying to catch him out for being a hypocrite given the simple party-hard themes of early work and the more mature takes on things later, including and especially about women), and he said something to the effect of "I'd rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever." I think about that a lot.

kayodelycaon 3y ago

As someone who has changed his mind fairly often when shown sufficient evidence, I’ve rarely been mocked for it. If you’re sincere and can explain why, it’s not really problems. It takes humility and a certain amount of confidence to say you were wrong. It also helps not to be a dick about your beliefs. I prefer to explain why I believe what I believe. When people know why you stand for something, your surface beliefs make more sense. I’ve made being correct more important than being right. It’s really hard to make a meaningful argument when I’ve just said I agree with you.

Verdex 3y ago

My theory is that there are three ways to "know" something: 1) Socially 2) Intuitively 3) Structurally Each with their own pros and cons. Structurally is more or less having a mathematical proof of the knowledge. Intuitively is having enough experience with a domain that your gut decisions have a very good probability of being very good. And socially is listening to peer pressure. In defense of peer pressure. Imagine a forest that is absolutely littered with abandoned ancient wells. A person walking through the forest is at constant threat of falling into a hidden well and then dying, never to be seen again. Structurally, we cannot prove or disprove the existence of ancient wells in a forest that were dug out and then forgotten long before our civilization came along. Intuitively it doesn't really matter how much experience you have with the woods. Either you enter the woods and you live or you die. Your first mistake will result in your immediate death, so you can't build up a good intuition through trial and error. But socially, we can tell our kids that the demon bear lives in the woods and it'll eat your brain if you go in there and nobody will ever see you again, so stay out. If you are going to rely not on your intuition OR you ability to reason something out, but you are going to store your knowledge "in the cloud" of society. Then you're going to tend to want reliability. If I google how to spell "peace" because I can't be bothered to remember how to spell it myself, then I'm probably going to start mocking it if it starts returning "pease". People get mocked because the mocker doesn't like that their cognitive cloud storage is acting faulty. Mocking which you'll find stops once many queried "nodes" starts to return the new result instead of just a single one.

kypro 3y ago

It's weird to me that people even seek to have opinions in the first place. That always seemed like the wrong way to view the world from the perspective of an observer with incomplete data. I mean take a topic like global warming... It might be true or false in reality, but from our perspectives as subjective observers with incomplete data we can only ever say things about global warming with degrees of confidence. Therefore I tend to think of myself as an ~80% believer in global warming and a ~20% disbeliever – evidence seems to strongly weight on the side of global warming being a real phenomena, but it's certainly not inconceivable to me that our data may be incomplete. Obviously where binary decisions need to be made I will act as if I believe global warming is real, but the point is I genuinely don't know and to say I believe in global warming as if it's rational to have a binary opinion on such things would be utterly absurd. Another upside of thinking like this is that I genuinely don't seek to have opinions on anything. I like to think of my "opinions" more as superpositions of opinions which only manifest as binaries temporarily in situations where I need to act on my beliefs as if they're binaries. I also like to remind myself that my own beliefs are simply the net of all opinions held by others with my own weightings – like a softmax output or something. Therefore I hold all political positions and all ideologies to some degree. For example, I consider myself as being both someone who supports Brexit and someone who doesn't and I think this makes me more open and understanding when it comes to controversial opinions. At least I seem to find it very easy to incorporate new positions or data without the typical mental blockers because something is labeled a "x" or "y" talking point. If someone makes a good point which I hadn't considered before I'll just be like, "oh that's interesting" and then it's part of my beliefs automatically. That wouldn't necessarily mean that the ideology that motivated that point would manifest when I'm forced to make binary decisions, and in this way I can easily view the majority of Brexit talking points as truthy without actually voting Brexit. On the negatives people have said I'm schizophrenic with my beliefs because I'm fine with manifesting different binary opinions from week to week. But I think I'd argue it's probably more rational to do that when operating with a low level of certainty. I mean what's the alternative? Having a binary opinion the pros and cons of something as nuanced as freedom vs security? That would be equally absurd. If you force me to take to have a binary opinion it will be inconsistent.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

It's not weird at all, it's basically normal human group psychology, as near as I can tell, looking through history. Your in group has a set of beliefs, the out group has other beliefs, it's what makes them others and worth competing against/destroying if needed. The major societal improvement that is science gives one a decent algorithm for changing ones mind. I believe being able to point at the algorithm is a very overlooked part of why we began to be able to change our minds more effectively and less violently as a society.

dumbmrblah 3y ago

I rather be right than consistent.

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago

I thought graham got banned from twitter

snacktaster 3y ago
He came slinking back just like they all did. Removed the mastodon link from his profile so they would unban his account.

seydor 3y ago

It s even more weird that people care if they are being mocked for their thoughts

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swayvil 3y ago

It takes me weeks of ambivalating to come up with one halfway decent idea. I edit my posts so much that I've been accused of deceit. Strong opinions are oxymoronic. Like heavy feathers.

rflrob 3y ago
You may be pleased to know that “essay” literally means “attempt”. The idea being that you aren’t sure exactly what you believe, so you’re going to attempt to write it down and see if that helps to clarify it for yourself and others.

distcs 3y ago

> It's weird that people get mocked for changing their minds. Do they? It could be that I live in a bubble due to the profession I am in and the environment and culture I have grown up in. But in the circle I live in, people are appreciated when they change their minds. It is seen as a sign of growth. Is it really that common for people to get mocked for changing their minds?

chasing 3y ago

This is the sort of vague comment that sounds observant and smart but absent of any kind of context is absolutely meaningless. I’ve been sort of lumping this stuff into the category of “self-help glurge” or “productivity glurge” lately. I’m sure there’s a better term. Pithy little vapid one-liners spit out by those who see themselves as thought leaders, designed to give their followers an empty little social/emotional boost. So much of Twitter and especially LinkedIn is full of this stuff lately.

whalesalad 3y ago
this is why i firmly believe paulg's twitter account is actually operated by openai there is an azure instance somewhere with the label DO_NOT_TERMINATE that has a cloud_init script which does a pip install paulg && paulg -d
koheripbal 3y ago
The reality is that people are mocked when they hold political beliefs that mockers don't share. Political commentary online is neither fair nor honest. It creates negative value for any platform. You can always find a way to mock someone, for even the most common and innocent behaviors.
- chasing 3y ago
  That’s not what he wrote — you’re filling in his empty vessel of a comment with context you’ve created. And we can certainly debate how people talk about politics online, but that’s way way more complicated and nuanced of a topic than “it’s weird when people get mocked for changing their mind.” Weird how? What does that even mean? What does “mocked” mean? Someone says something nasty on Twitter? Your kids make fun of you at dinner? What topic are you changing your mind about? A zoning issue in the town in which you live? Or have you suddenly realized that LGBTQ+ folks deserve rights after decades of people trying to convince you? Or did you listen to Joe Rogan and now you think vaccines contain tracking chips that let George Soros know when you use the bathroom? Context!
- gochi 3y ago
  >You can always find a way to mock someone, for even the most common and innocent behaviors. Thus ancient greek comedy and how influential it was in public opinion!

oneeyedpigeon 3y ago

Yeah, people don't get mocked for evaluating new evidence and reaching a new conclusion based upon it. What they get mocked for is: a) Professing to believe in something so strongly that they are unwilling to listen to good evidence to the contrary, then later changing their mind. b) Making promises that they later break. This is the really common one we see from politicians — in the UK, at least. Promise something to get into power, then do a complete about-turn when it suits them, not because of new insight gained but because of perceived personal benefits from changing 'opinion'.

Hasz 3y ago

Straw man argument at best. This is anecdotal, but ridicule for reevaluating a position is not at all common in my experience. When people tie their identities to a specific idea, it becomes hard to change that idea as they or the idea evolve. Personally, I always try to dissociate the idea from the person; I really like the motto of “always happy to adopt a better idea”. Helps reduce the ego burden of switching.

mindvirus 3y ago

To make this fun: What's a strong belief that you used to have, that you don't have anymore? Especially ones that go counter to mainstream narrative. Two for me (might start some fights, but it's all in good fun): - I generally believed that Python was great for building big systems, but having worked on some very large Python codebases, I've become a real zealot for a good type system, especially when refactoring and maintenance becomes a major issue. - Having worked with and maintained a couple of event sourced systems, I've become much less of a purist, given how hard they are to maintain and build on. So I went from "event sourcing is awesome" to "YAGNI".

talkingtab 3y ago

There should be another term in addition to cargo cult thinking - something like {college,education,expert} cult. This is only an issue when it becomes an article of belief that "what we are told is true". In other words when you decide that your own experience, senses and thoughts are not valid. As humans we cannot re-invent the wheel everyday. So we rely on google maps, even when that map tells us drive 200 miles north to Gray, Maine, do u-turn, come back and then drive to Montreal. We need to be able to trust information. I am somewhat convinced that we do not change our minds because of two problems. The first is cascading loss of trust. If I can't trust google maps in that case, can I ever trust it? Or any other map software? Or any software? Or the internet? This is too hard. The other problem is who to trust. If you don't trust that the US government is representing your interest and is a democracy, then who do you trust? Well we have the answer. Our ability to change our mind is our ability to adapt. I have recently been pondering whether html-css is a completely outdated way to build a web UI. What about threejs, react-three, etc. I can think about it without problem in the abstract. But what happens to all the work I have done and am doing if I change my mind? And perhaps most influential is "What will people think of me?" A person's ability to trust their own thinking as opposed to the current cult thinking is, to me, the best indicator of their intellectual value - completely orthogonal to their degree/education. Edit: Oh and I can almost hear people thinking I am wrong. That is not the issue. The question is what if I am right? There is a YC video some place where a YC person talks about Silicon Valley as a place where when people hear an idea they don't go to "wrong/right" they go to what if it is true? Or partly true, or ...

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greedo 3y ago

I think this comes down to people commenting out of their area of expertise. I remember hearing some expert (during the COVID outbreak) state that while they'd like to comment on some issue, they didn't have any particular expertise in the subject. It was refreshing not to have someone bullshitting. Humans love facts, knowledge, and particularly answers to their questions and concerns, even when there are no good answers. Yet there's always someone willing to provide an answer, even when it's fundamentally wrong.

golemotron 3y ago

It isn't weird at all. People form status hierarchies based upon whom they can trust. At a primal level, constancy gives people feelings of security. This may be irrational, and it may not be the way we want people to be, but that is beside the point. It's a very human thing and a core part of politics, religion and interpersonal relations.

jerf 3y ago

There is actually some rational ground for being suspicious of public figures who change their minds in their area of putative expertise. Nominally, the job of Secretary of the X is to be an expert in X. They should have done the work to come to the correct opinions, and be able to defend them. While in theory I wouldn't want them to hold that opinion at all costs, it should be a rare event that causes them to radically change their opinions. It should take some very substantial stuff to do it. They shouldn't be someone who can be blown by the wind and a couple of stray facts, because they should be sitting on a lot more facts that support their position. Now, in reality this is all sorts of naive and the Secretary of the X was absolutely certainly not put there simply because they're the best at X. We're lucky if that was even a consideration and if they can even follow the most basic issues in field X. Nevertheless, despite the fact a number of people know that the nominal level of politics is far from the only one, it remains an important one. The nominal level of politics becomes more important the larger the group of people, and national scale is just about the largest relevant scale. Even so, even in small environments I find the nominal level of politics remains important even when every single participant knows everyone else is putting on a political show for everyone else. It's weird to me, but while analyzing that surface level is nowhere near sufficient to understand what is going on, it never ceases being relevant. So it remains relevant for people in positions of authority to have relatively stable positions. Otherwise they're penetrating that nominal level of politics, and that's a very dangerous thing for them to do. Despite the fact we visibly have a lot of people in charge of X who know basically nothing about X and are clearly there for purely political reasons, if they actually publicly admitted they know nothing about X and they're just there because of their political skill, they'd be out of a job within the week. This argument just applies to authority figures. But then, in my experience, in real life changing your mind is less of a deal; sure, that one guy or whatever might call you out on it but it is not intrinsically a huge deal. (The resulting rearrangement of relationships may be a big deal, but I wouldn't call that being mocked for changing your mind, that's a consquence of changing circumstances.)

tlogan 3y ago

The nature of the “change their mind” in question is critical. If it pertains to business leadership or entrepreneurship, a change of mind is perfectly acceptable and even desirable. The issue arises when people “change their mind” regarding some moral or ideological stances solely for their benefit, especially when such changes impact others. Because maintaining the old stance would adversely affect them - that is when mockery should start. Also labeling this as merely "changing their minds" is a misleading oversimplification, a tactic used to rationalize unsavory behaviors. However, it's important to remember that the world isn't that simple; it's a complex tapestry of nuances and gray areas.

javier_e06 3y ago

Every year I pick a different NFL team to go all the way. They way I see it if the players can so can I.

tlogan 3y ago

The tweet should be “It is weird that people who are not self-serving hypocrites get mocked for changing their minds”. But in that case the tweet will not be true…

jenkstom 3y ago

Not when you believe that the absolute standard for truth was written thousands of years ago and never has and never will change. Forget historical truth, we already know that's absurd, but plenty of people think that way.

ausbah 3y ago

this is kind a bad take. like other comments say, genuine intellectual journey is great on most every topic. yet I'm not going to give points, much less MORE points, to someone who use to be a bigot, conspiracy theorist, or any other similar flavor of belief

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jsdeveloper 3y ago

One should stay anonymous on THE INTERNET if they feel offended. When you put our bladder in front of wolves , you should not argue about wolves are wrong. If you out your personal stuff on internet, be it just your name you invited people to disect it!

mola 3y ago

I find it weird that such lazy superficial thinkers are the rulers of our age.

lanstin 3y ago

Doesn't anyone have beliefs that are not modeled best by booleans? I intuitively like to use trivalent logic "true/false/not known" but the Bayesian reals from 0 to 1 is also pretty useful. Does one not continually adjust the weights assigned to all manner of propositions? For that matter, doesn't one adjust the meaning assigned to vague propositions as the specifics of the case become clearer? ("I thought DRY meant have your code look like gzip'ed output, but now I see it means after spotting a pattern, take a moment to think about it and see if there's not some nice coherent abstraction you are brushing against and could profitably use?")

mistermann 3y ago
> I intuitively like to use trivalent logic "true/false/not known" but the Bayesian reals from 0 to 1 is also pretty useful. In my experience less than 10% of people think in non-binary, non-heuristic-based forms on these and similar topics, and even Rationalists fare not much better.
- lanstin 3y ago
  I think it is a more productive tweak to thinking to understand beliefs as not being fully true or fully false than to believe that one can be purely rational in one’s actions or beliefs.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    I mostly agree, although the meme-based beliefs about the simplistic notion that it is ~impossible to be "purely rational in one’s actions or beliefs" is highly inaccurate imho. I don't disagree that people can't currently do it, but then consider how much we've improved when it comes to things like racism. Maybe if we actually tried to be rational (rather than patting ourselves on the back as is a popular practice here and in Rationalist and Scientific communities) we could make similar progress.
    - lanstin 3y ago
      I find it a category error to ask reason for a why do one thing over another. Our animal nature gives us motivation which we use reason to help. Not that it isn’t usually a benefit to fulfilling our motivations to have our reason finely honed.

johnea 3y ago

It's weird that people use the twitverse...

coldtea 3y ago

It's not weird to mock people "changing their minds" if you believe that their change of minds is just them faking it to get on with the prevailing political/social wind or to jump on a bandwaggon for profit.

biggoodwolf 3y ago

It hard for Protestants or crypto-Protestants (i.e. many atheists from Protestant backgrounds) to accept someone changing their minds.

rdtsc 3y ago

Public posting of positions, say on Twitter or Facebook, makes it less likely they would even attempt to change their mind. They will rationalize very hard to keep their previous position. I call this “Twitterification” of beliefs. This is amplified by how logical, or generally intellectually superior one feels compared to others. An extra bonus if they acted very sure, mocked, or dismissed some opposing beliefs.

ineedasername 3y ago

Controversial answer (maybe): Not changing you mind may be appropriate* (I'll explain [1]) though it also reminds me of a famous and apt observation [2]. [1] New facts do not always permit a change of mind because they they may support. indisputable but incompatible explanations/opinions/points of view.More facts are needed to reconcile things. For this reason a person should strive to cultivate the skill of believing positions at the some time opinions, wholly incompatible. This is difficult. It takes effort and practice to partition your mind in a way that separates belief in one viewpoint from the belief in the other. It is often uncomfortable [3], and for me I can only truly achieve it for brief moments. Nonetheless it's an extremely useful skill to navigate encountering new information & consider another person's viewpoint when it contradicts my own. Ideally new information eventually comes along that explains how both can be true at the time. [2] Quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" --Ralph Waldo Emerson [3] To reveal some very personal details, I was helped in honing this skill by having to deal with mental health issues that force completely irrational thoughts on me at the same time that I attempt, with varying degrees of success, to bring down a hammer of rational reasoning and logic against those thoughts. The former makes for a tortuous experience in itself, while the later imposes an very strange but helpful contradictory belief with both held in my head simultaneously.

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exabrial 3y ago

A mature adult is capable their mind. A childish egoist does not for fear of their pride.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

He's right. As some point in my life I ceased to believe that you are supposed to find your beliefs and defend them to the death, even in the face of new evidence. Of course I didn't articulate it that way in those days. I think some people become enlightened with acceptance of the fact that theyre probably wrong, they probably don't know what about, you have to live life believing you're right (otherwise you wouldn't believe anything) and always be ready to accept when you're wrong about something. Once this realization comes, your beliefs become detached from your ego. I make a point to reserve the right to change my mind about anything at any point in time. I can't grow as a person otherwise. I don't owe anyone an apology for that, or for being wrong about something. And I am willing to consider any viewpoint, any at all, even some that are unpallatable to me or someone else. I haven't internalized or acknowledged the correctness of many of those extreme viewpoints because my faculty of reason has led me to disbelieve many of them, but I do detach myself when discussing or considering them. I'm after the truth. I want to be right, not feel right, and that means learning, which means being OK with being wrong and changing your mind when appropriate.

QuantumGood 3y ago

It's weird that people are expected to have made up their mind. "I've been looking into this for awhile, here's what I've found so far" is much closer to the truth.