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

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.