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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 c

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
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      > He doesn't qualify who he is talking about and in which situations. Yeah this sort of grand, vague postering is the kind of thing that tech personalities do and it's because they get the kind of blind positive reinforcement from followers who have their own agenda. Someone in his position can write something like "Not everything is knowing" and get a bunch of adulatory responses and just think they're providing some deep philosophical fodder.
- lordkirchner 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s uncommon to believe the person who started with the right answer is smarter, or wiser than the person who had to work to get there. However, many people land in the right answer right away by chance. If we valued finding the truth over being right, people would more often admit they had the right answer by simply guessing or because they followed their tribe.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    One example is merely being born into the right answer, like a morally superior practice. You might never do the work to arrive at that moral position yourself so you might not actually hold the belief as strongly or as internally consistently as someone who reasoned themself into the position.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yes. What makes people smarter or wiser is precisely that they work to get to the positions they hold (even if those positions are mistaken), and never stop questioning themselves or evaluating information that could change their position. People seriously overvalue "being right". Discovering you're wrong is far more valuable and is worthy of celebration. It means you learned something, and are just a little less ignorant as a result.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      > Discovering you're wrong is far more valuable and is worthy of celebration. Sure, but if in the course of being convinced of the wrong thing they have caused harm it should cause guilt and embarrassment.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Hmmm, an interesting thought. I think that regardless of whether or not someone's belief is correct, causing harm to unconsenting others should always cause some amount of guilt or embarrassment. But if I hold a belief that is leading me to cause harm to people, and then I discover that I'm wrong, is that not a reason for even greater celebration? It means that I have become a less harmful person.
- veidr 3y ago
  He's also doing this thing we need a name for, something like "fallacious pithiness". I've noticed that when people reduce some random thesis to a level of brevity beyond the minimum to actually express it coherently -- but do so succinctly and perhaps a bit archly -- the audience enjoys the illusion of effective communication, and fills in the intellectual voids on their own, affirmatively. As if they've gotten a bargain, or been saved some time. I mainly noticed this when so many people stopped writing awesome long-form blog posts, and supplanted it with tweeting. I seldom found value in the tweets, even from people whose blogs I prized. But many people did! And the tweeters were encouraged. I see the same thing here. I mainly know the OP from his essays, which are overall quite good (IMHO). I subscribed to the RSS feed of them. I think I've read them all, even. But it's hard to imagine a version of this tweet as a full essay (even a short one) that didn't end up repudiating the core idea entirely. Because once you had to add even a bit more detail -- such as examples of it happening in the wild -- you'd end up realizing that people don't generally get mocked for changing their minds. That changing your mind is actually encouraged and praised by various books, corporate 'leadership principles', philosophers, etc... and in most cases, derision and animosity aimed at opinion-changers tends to be aimed at the ones who are obviously self-serving hypocrites, not those who've genuinely reconsidered things and come to a better conclusion. So even though you still could, no dooubt, come up with some examples, through the process of writing the essay (or blog post), you'd... realize it was bullshit. And then, you wouldn't publish the essay.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    > ...when people reduce some random thesis to a level of brevity beyond the minimum to actually express it coherently... This has often struck me as one of the worst things about Twitter (i.e., that everyone tries to have conversations about serious stuff on a platform that's not conducive to long/detailed/nuanced posts), but it looks like PG's paying for Twitter's little paid subscription service, which, iirc, does let you write lontform tweets to your heart's content. So that's a bit ironic, maybe.
    - delecti 3y ago
      Minor nit: many high profile accounts (supposedly all accounts with more than 1m followers) have had Twitter Blue imposed on them. It's impossible to say whether he paid, or whether it was given to him because of his fame. Though either way, he would have access to the features of it, so your main point stands.
- yowzadave 3y ago
  Is there a subtext to the comment he is making? I.e., a specific individual that he is referencing with this tweet?
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    It souds very much like a subtweet, but of what is very far from clear. (As is often the case if you aren’t in near identical Twitter bubbles.)
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    Maybe this triggered it, but Yesterday people were trashing this woman for being against horse racing now even though they could dig up a tweet of hers from 11 years ago where she was excited about an ascot race: https://twitter.com/imlucywatson/status/1673050143027781632 https://twitter.com/imlucywatson/status/1673050143027781632
- mr_00ff00 3y ago
  I don’t think that’s really what being hypocritical is. Changing your mind doesn’t make you a hypocrite. Hypocrites are people that claim to have certain morals, but act differently. That’s not people that change opinions. Example of a hypocrite: “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong and everything in the Bible is right, sorry I have to be against gay rights” * proceeds to have affairs, use the lord’s name in vain, and does many other things the Bible considers wrong* This person isn’t a hypocrite if they change their minds about gay rights, or even went back and forth. They are a hypocrite because they claim their actions are guided by the Bible, yet clearly they aren’t because they conveniently choose what to follow.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    Just to expand the conversation. Few Americans follow the bible just because (fundamentalism). Most do it for cultural reasons, and those cultural norms also dictate picking-and-choosing what to follow, while claiming the religious authority of the bible. It's not the individual that is hypocritical, it's the culture. The reason I mention this is that hypocriticism requires some kind of logic to track consistency (or lack of) and yet faith is blindly illogical (believe this just because). No one is analysing why someone has (or chooses to have) a faith in something in the first place. I also think there is a definition of hypocrite that goes something like: being a proponent of some universal moral rule, while excepting oneself from it.
  - credit_guy 3y ago
    I disagree with your example. I know it's only tangential to the topic being discussed, but it's quite important, so I'll elaborate. I used to be anti-gay. So, in PG's words, ~P (why did he choose "~" instead of "!"? ~ is bitwise not in c++, while ! is boolean not. It's going to remain one of the mysteries of life). Now I'm not only pro-gay, pro-trans, etc, but thankful that I live in a country that is free, and gay and trans people, and all people, can decide for themselves what life they want to live, and to consider that they don't need approval from the rest of the society, or actually, that the rest of the society owes them an approval for their life choices. But why was I anti-gay? Because that is what I learned as a kid. Kids learn from adults. Especially during teenage years, they are rebellious, but in reality, they still take their value clues from adults. And once you are an adult, and hold some values, it's difficult to think that they values you've held all your life were wrong. So you come up with excuses. Like the Bible thing. I grew in an atheist society, so that was not my excuse. My excuse was simply that I was raised thinking that it's wrong to be gay. That was it. In time I changed my argument into "Gay people want to get marriage benefits from the government", but someone pointed to me that gay people pay taxes too. So, after a while I realized that whatever arguments I had were hallow. But most people don't go through what PG call the journey from ~P to P. Their brain doesn't allow them too. Find a way to help them.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > 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. In fact, those people generally get more attention and praise than the people who have had the beliefs all along. Movements seem to generally be lead by born-agains. Every other media liberal has their conversion from a sheltered conservatism story, and conservatives constantly talk about how they were dumb liberals until they saw the world. A lot of people are aggressively impervious to all reasoning or evidence until the opinions of people who they rely on for friendship or money change, then they suddenly change opinion without any new argument or evidence being introduced. That type of flocking behavior is what is seen as hypocrisy.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Unless you’re in politics, and then they ask you why you changed your mind 15 years ago like it makes you a bad person instead of a growing human.
- smitty1e 3y ago
  > But it's rare to mock someone for having a true intellectual journey I'm not sure. Consider those who are de-transitioning. The effect seems akin to departing some flavor of cult.
treeman79 3y ago
[flagged]
duxup 3y ago
I think voters often WANT to hear strong ideological opinions that they think will never change on things they care about too, sometimes when it isn’t there. Single issue voters can be weird like that. The local pot enthusiast crowd that I know we’re furious year after year when it wasn’t legalized. They would note that some politicians said they supported it, but it wasn’t passed. They we’re upset ignoring the fact that legalization would never pass due to the balance of power in another branch of government. They often feel like they’ve been betrayed or lied to if the outcome they want doesn’t happen.
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
I don't think the problem is the assertion - even if the change of heart seems opportunistic - as much as the absence of acknowledgement of their own fallibility and their prior errors in world views. Granted, such an acknowledgement involves some degree of humility, but I think this is preferable to not having opinions at all, especially about issues that matter.
ravenstine 3y ago
While true, people also get mocked when they are perceived as being uncertain. Words like "maybe", "possibly", "likely", "hypothetically" tend to subtly piss off the 68th percentile because we all like certainty. People want answers, plain and simple. Anything in-between requires more thought, and thoughts make your head hurt. Similarly, while it's said that it's okay to admit that you don't know something, my experience is that most people don't react well to this, though they will try to tolerate it in a corporate environment. Unless you're speaking with someone who appreciates intellectual honesty, at best you'll be faced with a subtle disgust reaction, and at worst you'll be called out for not knowing something. So to the credit of those who profess strong positions, I think society is... unsophisticated enough that such strong positions are implicitly encouraged.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  > thoughts make your head hurt This is a bit uncharitable. People only have so much capacity and interests. Constantly analyzing the parts of life you don’t care about is exhausting. For example: Most people would be absolutely crushed if they had to manage my disability the way I do. For me, it’s second nature. That doesn’t make neurotypical people less. We’re the weird ones who enjoy being curious about a broad set of topics rather than just one or two. The curiosity that is so much a part of us is not necessary for much of life. We just can’t imagine living any other way.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > While true, people also get mocked when they are perceived as being uncertain. I’ve only seen this be a common thing when people use (implicitly or explicitly) a weakly held premise as the basis for a strongly held conclusion, or one with a very high cost born by other people.
- Thrymr 3y ago
  "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." W. B. Yeats
- blincoln 3y ago
  What you describe is such a strong element of human psychology that friends who have been in the military have told me their leadership training explicitly included something to the effect of handling decision-making this way in the field: * Immediately go with your gut instinct. * Appear 100% confident in your decision. * Avoid flip-flopping unless there would be catastrophic consequences. I'm sure it works very well for keeping a group of people alive in deadly situations. Because it's so persuasive, it can often be an effective way to get others to follow instructions in less grave circumstances, but when there's no time pressure, in the bigger picture it's a bad idea IMO.
throwuwu 3y ago
If you view all beliefs as provisional then you’ll probably accomplish nothing. You have to go all in sometimes even just to figure out if you’re wrong.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  No, you don’t. In fact, if you don’t view it as provisional, you’ll never figure out its wrong. Cf. Columbus and reaching the East Indies.
awongh 3y ago
If you extend this idea past political and policy issues I still have the general impression that people are looked down upon for changing their mind. I think we can widen the definition to include any surprising new ideas a person holds that seems to contradict their previously professed ideas / identity. Look at when a public culture figure changes their ideas about something in a way that breaks our image of their identity- Jim Carey starting to make paintings or Lewis Hamilton designing clothes. If someone is well known for something then it seems like there’s a general aversion to that person expressing their thoughts and opinions in a different domain. I think this might have to do with the fact that our ideas of someone’s identity is just never that accurate- it’s difficult to understand the nuances of why someone would believe something, so it’s surprising when they express an idea that might seem contradictory to something they expressed before. This still can hold true for a personal acquaintance too- “my uncle is learning to speak German??”. If we’re talking about politicians then our system is also not setup for them to express a lot of nuanced opinions. If they change their mind I feel like a lot of the time the nuanced justifications for that change of kind get washed away in the mainstream media.
- gjulianm 3y ago
  > Look at when a public culture figure changes their ideas about something in a way that breaks our image of their identity- Jim Carey starting to make paintings or Lewis Hamilton designing clothes. If someone is well known for something then it seems like there’s a general aversion to that person expressing their thoughts and opinions in a different domain. Usually the issue is not about them doing something that breaks their identity but about using their position of influence to get an advantage with having far less skill and talent than the competitors that didn't start out famous.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
So glad to see this as the top comment. Specific pg case in point. In the early stages of the Twitter acquisition, pg mocked others for saying that Musk didn't know what he was doing wrt Twitter. Then, a couple weeks or months later, pg sent out a tweet complaining about something in Twitter that had broken, pg expressing the sentiment that he was baffled by the level of incompetence. Now, I don't necessarily think this represents a complete change of mind, but pg was roasted pretty significantly online for his new sentiment. But it wasn't because pg "changed his mind", it's because he was so condescending to others who viewed Musk's management skills negatively to begin with. Furthermore, he only tweeted out his negative opinion when something specifically affected him directly. It's like when conservatives suddenly have a change of opinion with respect to gay rights when their child comes out. I'm not going to throw you some party celebrating your ability to change your mind when all you've done is show that you only care about shit when it affects you directly.
- fedh 3y ago
  [flagged]
brodouevencode 3y ago
Exactly this. Doubly true when they vilified any dissenters at the start.
darklycan51 3y ago
But this is the case on everything though, literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago and now is supportive, mostly, because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Shaming people who have "strong moral/ideological positions" is basically just denying human nature... if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided. Obviously, someone who is "Open to all viewpoints" is ideal, but in many cases those people (Myself included in many cases) also do not feel too strongly about any topic to act on it (it is mostly just our nature), if everyone was like that we wouldn't have activists for example.
- amerkhalid 3y ago
  Exactly this. While GP has a point but, in general, there is a lot bigger penalty for changing mind than for being stubborn. We would be better off as a society if we balance penalties for changing your position vs being stubborn. And I rather have leaders who are hypocritical/opportunistic/etc but at least using new data to change their views than those who reject the new data and stick to their original viewpoint.
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  > because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Two things can be true at once. People who identify as LGBT can be very pleasant people. Additionally, I can still believe that identifying as LGBT is wrong according to my religious views. In fact, according to my religious views, everybody is a sinner and doing stuff that's wrong, but that doesn't mean they're horrible people. But it also doesn't justify the wrong behavior. And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.
  - nyanpasu64 3y ago
    I think it's harmful to society and people's lived well-being (as opposed to adherence to values espoused by millenia-old orthodoxies) to judge people as being sinful for being attracted to and caring for loved ones of the same gender, as opposed to being attracted to and caring for loved ones of a different gender.
praptak 3y ago
People get mocked when they change small beliefs to keep heavy beliefs intact. Say changing their belief about a policy when they find out it's based on politics they oppose.
wesapien 3y ago
Not really weird, if that person was an asshole along the way.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
Are think you are working with a small subset of humanity: highly educated people. For everyone else in the world, dogma rules. It is not that people get mocked when they profess a strong moral position and change it - it is that the vast majority live by strong moral positions and apply this level of certainty to everything. Just look at the increase in discussions around "how to change people's minds" since Trump entered the political scene: we suddenly needed to deal with folks who will not change their mind under any circumstances. Mocking people for changing their mind is how the "in group" of the tribe maintains its dominance. We, the shamans, live by different rules, and occasionally get nailed to trees by the mob.
glimshe 3y ago
Interestingly, when people profess a strong opinion and change their mind, this is exactly when we shouldn't be mocking them. Everything we say is due to mental/rational processes applied over data we gather, so... oftentimes it's just an opinion. Sometimes we'll strongly believe something totally bogus (I used to believe in communism when I was a teenager). And the fact we change our mind when holding very strong beliefs is actually a sign of intellectual honesty. Unfortunately, I see people being mocked even when transparent and respectful. But I mostly agree with you that being respectful helps receiving respect when you're wrong.

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
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    > He doesn't qualify who he is talking about and in which situations. Yeah this sort of grand, vague postering is the kind of thing that tech personalities do and it's because they get the kind of blind positive reinforcement from followers who have their own agenda. Someone in his position can write something like "Not everything is knowing" and get a bunch of adulatory responses and just think they're providing some deep philosophical fodder.
lordkirchner 3y ago
I don’t think it’s uncommon to believe the person who started with the right answer is smarter, or wiser than the person who had to work to get there. However, many people land in the right answer right away by chance. If we valued finding the truth over being right, people would more often admit they had the right answer by simply guessing or because they followed their tribe.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  One example is merely being born into the right answer, like a morally superior practice. You might never do the work to arrive at that moral position yourself so you might not actually hold the belief as strongly or as internally consistently as someone who reasoned themself into the position.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Yes. What makes people smarter or wiser is precisely that they work to get to the positions they hold (even if those positions are mistaken), and never stop questioning themselves or evaluating information that could change their position. People seriously overvalue "being right". Discovering you're wrong is far more valuable and is worthy of celebration. It means you learned something, and are just a little less ignorant as a result.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    > Discovering you're wrong is far more valuable and is worthy of celebration. Sure, but if in the course of being convinced of the wrong thing they have caused harm it should cause guilt and embarrassment.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Hmmm, an interesting thought. I think that regardless of whether or not someone's belief is correct, causing harm to unconsenting others should always cause some amount of guilt or embarrassment. But if I hold a belief that is leading me to cause harm to people, and then I discover that I'm wrong, is that not a reason for even greater celebration? It means that I have become a less harmful person.
veidr 3y ago
He's also doing this thing we need a name for, something like "fallacious pithiness". I've noticed that when people reduce some random thesis to a level of brevity beyond the minimum to actually express it coherently -- but do so succinctly and perhaps a bit archly -- the audience enjoys the illusion of effective communication, and fills in the intellectual voids on their own, affirmatively. As if they've gotten a bargain, or been saved some time. I mainly noticed this when so many people stopped writing awesome long-form blog posts, and supplanted it with tweeting. I seldom found value in the tweets, even from people whose blogs I prized. But many people did! And the tweeters were encouraged. I see the same thing here. I mainly know the OP from his essays, which are overall quite good (IMHO). I subscribed to the RSS feed of them. I think I've read them all, even. But it's hard to imagine a version of this tweet as a full essay (even a short one) that didn't end up repudiating the core idea entirely. Because once you had to add even a bit more detail -- such as examples of it happening in the wild -- you'd end up realizing that people don't generally get mocked for changing their minds. That changing your mind is actually encouraged and praised by various books, corporate 'leadership principles', philosophers, etc... and in most cases, derision and animosity aimed at opinion-changers tends to be aimed at the ones who are obviously self-serving hypocrites, not those who've genuinely reconsidered things and come to a better conclusion. So even though you still could, no dooubt, come up with some examples, through the process of writing the essay (or blog post), you'd... realize it was bullshit. And then, you wouldn't publish the essay.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  > ...when people reduce some random thesis to a level of brevity beyond the minimum to actually express it coherently... This has often struck me as one of the worst things about Twitter (i.e., that everyone tries to have conversations about serious stuff on a platform that's not conducive to long/detailed/nuanced posts), but it looks like PG's paying for Twitter's little paid subscription service, which, iirc, does let you write lontform tweets to your heart's content. So that's a bit ironic, maybe.
  - delecti 3y ago
    Minor nit: many high profile accounts (supposedly all accounts with more than 1m followers) have had Twitter Blue imposed on them. It's impossible to say whether he paid, or whether it was given to him because of his fame. Though either way, he would have access to the features of it, so your main point stands.
yowzadave 3y ago
Is there a subtext to the comment he is making? I.e., a specific individual that he is referencing with this tweet?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  It souds very much like a subtweet, but of what is very far from clear. (As is often the case if you aren’t in near identical Twitter bubbles.)
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  Maybe this triggered it, but Yesterday people were trashing this woman for being against horse racing now even though they could dig up a tweet of hers from 11 years ago where she was excited about an ascot race: https://twitter.com/imlucywatson/status/1673050143027781632 https://twitter.com/imlucywatson/status/1673050143027781632
mr_00ff00 3y ago
I don’t think that’s really what being hypocritical is. Changing your mind doesn’t make you a hypocrite. Hypocrites are people that claim to have certain morals, but act differently. That’s not people that change opinions. Example of a hypocrite: “The Bible says homosexuality is wrong and everything in the Bible is right, sorry I have to be against gay rights” * proceeds to have affairs, use the lord’s name in vain, and does many other things the Bible considers wrong* This person isn’t a hypocrite if they change their minds about gay rights, or even went back and forth. They are a hypocrite because they claim their actions are guided by the Bible, yet clearly they aren’t because they conveniently choose what to follow.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  Just to expand the conversation. Few Americans follow the bible just because (fundamentalism). Most do it for cultural reasons, and those cultural norms also dictate picking-and-choosing what to follow, while claiming the religious authority of the bible. It's not the individual that is hypocritical, it's the culture. The reason I mention this is that hypocriticism requires some kind of logic to track consistency (or lack of) and yet faith is blindly illogical (believe this just because). No one is analysing why someone has (or chooses to have) a faith in something in the first place. I also think there is a definition of hypocrite that goes something like: being a proponent of some universal moral rule, while excepting oneself from it.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  I disagree with your example. I know it's only tangential to the topic being discussed, but it's quite important, so I'll elaborate. I used to be anti-gay. So, in PG's words, ~P (why did he choose "~" instead of "!"? ~ is bitwise not in c++, while ! is boolean not. It's going to remain one of the mysteries of life). Now I'm not only pro-gay, pro-trans, etc, but thankful that I live in a country that is free, and gay and trans people, and all people, can decide for themselves what life they want to live, and to consider that they don't need approval from the rest of the society, or actually, that the rest of the society owes them an approval for their life choices. But why was I anti-gay? Because that is what I learned as a kid. Kids learn from adults. Especially during teenage years, they are rebellious, but in reality, they still take their value clues from adults. And once you are an adult, and hold some values, it's difficult to think that they values you've held all your life were wrong. So you come up with excuses. Like the Bible thing. I grew in an atheist society, so that was not my excuse. My excuse was simply that I was raised thinking that it's wrong to be gay. That was it. In time I changed my argument into "Gay people want to get marriage benefits from the government", but someone pointed to me that gay people pay taxes too. So, after a while I realized that whatever arguments I had were hallow. But most people don't go through what PG call the journey from ~P to P. Their brain doesn't allow them too. Find a way to help them.
pessimizer 3y ago
> 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. In fact, those people generally get more attention and praise than the people who have had the beliefs all along. Movements seem to generally be lead by born-agains. Every other media liberal has their conversion from a sheltered conservatism story, and conservatives constantly talk about how they were dumb liberals until they saw the world. A lot of people are aggressively impervious to all reasoning or evidence until the opinions of people who they rely on for friendship or money change, then they suddenly change opinion without any new argument or evidence being introduced. That type of flocking behavior is what is seen as hypocrisy.
hinkley 3y ago
Unless you’re in politics, and then they ask you why you changed your mind 15 years ago like it makes you a bad person instead of a growing human.
smitty1e 3y ago
> But it's rare to mock someone for having a true intellectual journey I'm not sure. Consider those who are de-transitioning. The effect seems akin to departing some flavor of cult.

treeman79 3y ago

[flagged]

duxup 3y ago

I think voters often WANT to hear strong ideological opinions that they think will never change on things they care about too, sometimes when it isn’t there. Single issue voters can be weird like that. The local pot enthusiast crowd that I know we’re furious year after year when it wasn’t legalized. They would note that some politicians said they supported it, but it wasn’t passed. They we’re upset ignoring the fact that legalization would never pass due to the balance of power in another branch of government. They often feel like they’ve been betrayed or lied to if the outcome they want doesn’t happen.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago

I don't think the problem is the assertion - even if the change of heart seems opportunistic - as much as the absence of acknowledgement of their own fallibility and their prior errors in world views. Granted, such an acknowledgement involves some degree of humility, but I think this is preferable to not having opinions at all, especially about issues that matter.

ravenstine 3y ago

While true, people also get mocked when they are perceived as being uncertain. Words like "maybe", "possibly", "likely", "hypothetically" tend to subtly piss off the 68th percentile because we all like certainty. People want answers, plain and simple. Anything in-between requires more thought, and thoughts make your head hurt. Similarly, while it's said that it's okay to admit that you don't know something, my experience is that most people don't react well to this, though they will try to tolerate it in a corporate environment. Unless you're speaking with someone who appreciates intellectual honesty, at best you'll be faced with a subtle disgust reaction, and at worst you'll be called out for not knowing something. So to the credit of those who profess strong positions, I think society is... unsophisticated enough that such strong positions are implicitly encouraged.

kayodelycaon 3y ago
> thoughts make your head hurt This is a bit uncharitable. People only have so much capacity and interests. Constantly analyzing the parts of life you don’t care about is exhausting. For example: Most people would be absolutely crushed if they had to manage my disability the way I do. For me, it’s second nature. That doesn’t make neurotypical people less. We’re the weird ones who enjoy being curious about a broad set of topics rather than just one or two. The curiosity that is so much a part of us is not necessary for much of life. We just can’t imagine living any other way.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> While true, people also get mocked when they are perceived as being uncertain. I’ve only seen this be a common thing when people use (implicitly or explicitly) a weakly held premise as the basis for a strongly held conclusion, or one with a very high cost born by other people.
Thrymr 3y ago
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." W. B. Yeats
blincoln 3y ago
What you describe is such a strong element of human psychology that friends who have been in the military have told me their leadership training explicitly included something to the effect of handling decision-making this way in the field: * Immediately go with your gut instinct. * Appear 100% confident in your decision. * Avoid flip-flopping unless there would be catastrophic consequences. I'm sure it works very well for keeping a group of people alive in deadly situations. Because it's so persuasive, it can often be an effective way to get others to follow instructions in less grave circumstances, but when there's no time pressure, in the bigger picture it's a bad idea IMO.

throwuwu 3y ago

If you view all beliefs as provisional then you’ll probably accomplish nothing. You have to go all in sometimes even just to figure out if you’re wrong.

dragonwriter 3y ago
No, you don’t. In fact, if you don’t view it as provisional, you’ll never figure out its wrong. Cf. Columbus and reaching the East Indies.

awongh 3y ago

If you extend this idea past political and policy issues I still have the general impression that people are looked down upon for changing their mind. I think we can widen the definition to include any surprising new ideas a person holds that seems to contradict their previously professed ideas / identity. Look at when a public culture figure changes their ideas about something in a way that breaks our image of their identity- Jim Carey starting to make paintings or Lewis Hamilton designing clothes. If someone is well known for something then it seems like there’s a general aversion to that person expressing their thoughts and opinions in a different domain. I think this might have to do with the fact that our ideas of someone’s identity is just never that accurate- it’s difficult to understand the nuances of why someone would believe something, so it’s surprising when they express an idea that might seem contradictory to something they expressed before. This still can hold true for a personal acquaintance too- “my uncle is learning to speak German??”. If we’re talking about politicians then our system is also not setup for them to express a lot of nuanced opinions. If they change their mind I feel like a lot of the time the nuanced justifications for that change of kind get washed away in the mainstream media.

gjulianm 3y ago
> Look at when a public culture figure changes their ideas about something in a way that breaks our image of their identity- Jim Carey starting to make paintings or Lewis Hamilton designing clothes. If someone is well known for something then it seems like there’s a general aversion to that person expressing their thoughts and opinions in a different domain. Usually the issue is not about them doing something that breaks their identity but about using their position of influence to get an advantage with having far less skill and talent than the competitors that didn't start out famous.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

So glad to see this as the top comment. Specific pg case in point. In the early stages of the Twitter acquisition, pg mocked others for saying that Musk didn't know what he was doing wrt Twitter. Then, a couple weeks or months later, pg sent out a tweet complaining about something in Twitter that had broken, pg expressing the sentiment that he was baffled by the level of incompetence. Now, I don't necessarily think this represents a complete change of mind, but pg was roasted pretty significantly online for his new sentiment. But it wasn't because pg "changed his mind", it's because he was so condescending to others who viewed Musk's management skills negatively to begin with. Furthermore, he only tweeted out his negative opinion when something specifically affected him directly. It's like when conservatives suddenly have a change of opinion with respect to gay rights when their child comes out. I'm not going to throw you some party celebrating your ability to change your mind when all you've done is show that you only care about shit when it affects you directly.

fedh 3y ago
[flagged]

brodouevencode 3y ago

Exactly this. Doubly true when they vilified any dissenters at the start.

darklycan51 3y ago

But this is the case on everything though, literally almost everyone used to be anti or neutral about LGBT 20 years ago and now is supportive, mostly, because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Shaming people who have "strong moral/ideological positions" is basically just denying human nature... if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided. Obviously, someone who is "Open to all viewpoints" is ideal, but in many cases those people (Myself included in many cases) also do not feel too strongly about any topic to act on it (it is mostly just our nature), if everyone was like that we wouldn't have activists for example.

amerkhalid 3y ago
Exactly this. While GP has a point but, in general, there is a lot bigger penalty for changing mind than for being stubborn. We would be better off as a society if we balance penalties for changing your position vs being stubborn. And I rather have leaders who are hypocritical/opportunistic/etc but at least using new data to change their views than those who reject the new data and stick to their original viewpoint.
_gabe_ 3y ago
> because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Two things can be true at once. People who identify as LGBT can be very pleasant people. Additionally, I can still believe that identifying as LGBT is wrong according to my religious views. In fact, according to my religious views, everybody is a sinner and doing stuff that's wrong, but that doesn't mean they're horrible people. But it also doesn't justify the wrong behavior. And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.
- nyanpasu64 3y ago
  I think it's harmful to society and people's lived well-being (as opposed to adherence to values espoused by millenia-old orthodoxies) to judge people as being sinful for being attracted to and caring for loved ones of the same gender, as opposed to being attracted to and caring for loved ones of a different gender.

praptak 3y ago

People get mocked when they change small beliefs to keep heavy beliefs intact. Say changing their belief about a policy when they find out it's based on politics they oppose.

wesapien 3y ago

Not really weird, if that person was an asshole along the way.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

Are think you are working with a small subset of humanity: highly educated people. For everyone else in the world, dogma rules. It is not that people get mocked when they profess a strong moral position and change it - it is that the vast majority live by strong moral positions and apply this level of certainty to everything. Just look at the increase in discussions around "how to change people's minds" since Trump entered the political scene: we suddenly needed to deal with folks who will not change their mind under any circumstances. Mocking people for changing their mind is how the "in group" of the tribe maintains its dominance. We, the shamans, live by different rules, and occasionally get nailed to trees by the mob.

glimshe 3y ago

Interestingly, when people profess a strong opinion and change their mind, this is exactly when we shouldn't be mocking them. Everything we say is due to mental/rational processes applied over data we gather, so... oftentimes it's just an opinion. Sometimes we'll strongly believe something totally bogus (I used to believe in communism when I was a teenager). And the fact we change our mind when holding very strong beliefs is actually a sign of intellectual honesty. Unfortunately, I see people being mocked even when transparent and respectful. But I mostly agree with you that being respectful helps receiving respect when you're wrong.