16 ms·

I really value people who change their mind gradually when new information, events, etc happen. I do not value people who change their mind frequently because

• TOMDM 3y ago
  To be trite, "Don't be so open minded that your brain falls out"
• phkahler 3y ago
  >> The last decade has really shown to me that people do not think for themselves. Thinking takes time and effort. It's important to allocate those resources to things we care about. Some are lazy, but I suspect a lot don't really care.
• thieving_magpie 3y ago
  I agree with you but it's an awkward set of criteria: - Change your mind when new information is given, that is thinking for yourself. - Don't change it too much, that is not thinking for yourself. - Not changing your mind is also not thinking for yourself. Like I say, I agree with you but the nuance here is difficult to explain.
  • JohnFen 3y ago
    I think the nuance is: knee-jerk reactions are bad, thoughtful reactions are good.
  • canjobear 3y ago
    The key thing is to change your mind because the facts truly have changed, as opposed to changing your mind because everyone else did.
• fullshark 3y ago
  Another problem I see is people who change their mind, and then pretend that's always been their position, just completely ignoring previous publications showing their positions have changed. They point to weasel words or emphasize some trivial nuances to pretend like it's not a contradiction, or worse, just simply ignore the evidence that they've switched their position.
  • larperdoodle 3y ago
    Unfortunately it seems to be viewed as hypocrisy to disagree with your own past opinions.
    • ceejayoz 3y ago
      Depends on the context a bit. It might be a tad hypocritical not to wrestle with how you got it so wrong previously, and why this time is different. There might be some frustration with the "it happened to me and now I get it!" converts who've often had others desperately try to get them to understand prior.
  • 8note 3y ago
    My dad does that, but he gets a lot of value out of it. When I'd tail him around work, he'd switch opinions to match the last person he was arguing with. The old opinion was already debunked, so theres no need to consider it
• synetic 3y ago
  I agree with the sentiment but it seems to me that if someone presents a new, compelling argument against a belief you hold then shouldn’t you change your mind immediately? It seems to me that how fast one’s mind ought to change depends on the quality of the new information/ideas you are presented with.
  • _Algernon_ 3y ago
    This would only be true if evaluating the quality of new information was instant. It's not.
    • nomel 3y ago
      Bollocks. I would claim that if this doesn't happen frequently, while you're a young adult, then there's a high chance that you're missing out on/ignoring perspectives outside of your family/social bubble. It can happen, and has happened to me several times, as an adult. But, I agree that it probably shouldn't be frequent. Sometimes genuine facts are presented that should immediately change a perspective.
      • Shugarl 3y ago
        I think you're right, but you're missing the point : There's nothing easy or instantaneous about knowing whether or not a fact is genuine. People can lie, can lie by omission, can try to influence your opinion by choosing carefully how they present the facts, and so on. You can always choose to trust some people/institutions, but that's trusting/believing, not knowing.
        • nomel 3y ago
          I don't believe I'm missing the point. You seem to be assuming that people are incapable of observing/verifying/creating their own facts. I don't see that being implied in this comment chain, and it's definitely not true.
      • _Algernon_ 3y ago
• hermannj314 3y ago
  You would definitely hate me. When faced with a new idea, I love assuming it is correct and try to see things from that perspective. It makes it very hard to believe almost anything. I also change my mind if too many people think the same thing, I will be contrarian for the sake of defending the position no one else wants to take up. But now you are making me think I've wasted my life. I probably have. Yep. I am almost certainly worthless like you said. I agree.
  • vlunkr 3y ago
    > I love assuming it is correct and try to see things from that perspective This isn't necessarily bad. Being able to understand the other side of some controversial topic, and even argue against your own position, is a sign of mental and emotional maturity. Switching your position to whatever argument you heard most recently is not.
  • code4life 3y ago
    I learned once (on npr when i used to listen to it) that when you hear some new information, you should immediately think the opposite. This gives you the ability to not subconsciously weight the idea you heard higher than you should. After all, for every point in life a reasonable counter point exists. I've done this for many years and I do believe the practice has helped me not blindly believe things.
• CalChris 3y ago
  It wasn't the Great Depression that formed Keynes thinking; he was 45 when the GD started. Indeed the article the letter to the QI cites is from 1924, well predating the GD. It wasn't Bloomsbury either. Really, Keynes was just naturally open minded.
• mikrl 3y ago
  Since we love categorizing, here is a quick taxonomy for what you are describing: Dogmatists: unthinking, inflexible Weathervanes: unthinking, flexible Skeptics: thinking, inflexible Pragmatists: thinking, flexible The names are adhoc and should be taken with a grain of salt. The thinkingness axis we can attach a notion of good/bad to, since it is generally better to think things through than not. Flexibility, not so much, but we can contrast the skeptic’s “I need more information before I can make a judgment” to the pragmatist’s “how can I use this right now?” and apply this to our workplaces. Certainly some of us are more skeptical than pragmatic, and vice versa.
  • ke88y 3y ago
    I think this two-axis system misses the difference between "weathervanes" and "partisans", who sit in the same place on the two-axis system but function very differently in practice.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • rawgabbit 3y ago
      I can understand "partisan" as someone whose primary adherence is loyalty to a party and will comply with the latest party talking points. I don't know what a "weathervane" is.
      • haswell 3y ago
        Weathervanes reorient themselves based on the direction the wind is blowing. I took this to mean: “weathervanes” are people who attach themselves to some popular sentiment without giving it much thought.
      • mikrl 3y ago
        Weathervanes point in the direction of the prevailing wind. You could call them trendies, or in cybercultural terms: NPC, I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING, etc
    • 3y ago
• heresie-dabord 3y ago
  > people do not think for themselves I understand your strong reaction to events in some countries in recent years, but the conclusion is both incomplete and unfair. People can and do think... This is demonstrable, look at the good things around us in the world. However, people can be brought very low intellectually and civically by their environment. They are vulnerable to a society that does not guarantee education and accurate information (in traditional or in modern media). People are willing to conform, especially in exchange for food and opportunity for shelter. People are consummately manipulated by the control of the information around them.
  • nomel 3y ago
    I think you're missing tribalism, which is a fundamental part of human nature [1]. A once (and almost certainly still is) useful tool that makes the mind irrational and blind. There's definitely some stupidity hard coded into all of us. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721419862289 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721419862289
• acyou 3y ago
  There is a combination of data processing and filtering happening. It's less about whether to change one's view, and more about whether or not to accept an input. If we accept a new input, our view of things must change, or else we will become insane, mentally ill or internally inconsistent. I think we're talking about data filtration here, not data processing. Yes?
• acyou 3y ago
  There is a combination of data processing and filtering happening. It's less about whether to change one's view, and more about whether or not to accept an input. If we accept a new input, our view of things must change, or else we will become insane, mentally ill or internally inconsistent. I think we're talking about data filtration here, not data processing. Does that make sense? To expand on that, someone who gradually changes their view is a little skeptical, but can be convinced given enough accumulated data points to accept a new paradigm. They effectively reject new information up to a point. That's what slowly changing your mind means.
  • nomel 3y ago
    > If we accept a new input, our view of things must change, or else we will become insane, mentally ill or internally inconsistent. This is beautiful. I subscribe to the belief that "intelligence" is any system that can meaningfully organize information on its own, and, perhaps, is more of an emergent behavior of organized information, rather than used to organize information. Although, I'm not sure those can be separated in a meaningful way.
• giantg2 3y ago
  "you would think the same would happen for significant events that have happened recently too." Probably people on both sides of an issue feel this way - "how could the other side not have changed their mind".
• thaumaturgy 3y ago
  This is a smart people trap: that "thinking" is what makes some people right and other people wrong. The practical reality is that nobody today can develop a sufficient depth of knowledge in more than a couple of niche subjects at best to be "right" about them at anything other than the most superficial of levels. Somebody might read a book, or several books, or several books and some blogs about a subject, or even take one or several courses in it, but that doesn't mean they know it. They know some things about it, and some of the things they think they know about it will be wrong. Maybe part of the disagreement here that isn't being addressed is the difference between ideas (or facts) and principles. My principles have changed very little over the years, and so the direction of my ideas haven't either. But my ideas change frequently because there are only a few subjects about which I know anything and I am a moron in the rest. edit: and even in those couple of subjects where I might claim some expertise, I'm wrong frustratingly often.
  • MAGZine 3y ago
    there's a vast difference between only knowing a bit and applying a little thought and only knowing a bit and not applying any thought. Without thought/consideration, you can hold an obviously incorrect position for quite some time before someone else bothers to correct you, or until you discover the other information. So, just because you _might_ be wrong, is not an excuse for not applying careful thought to all topics. This is especially true for 'strong opinions loosely held' people who seem to think that loosely holding an opinion is a replacement for putting even a modicum of thought into any given topic. It's not. You hold obviously wrong opinions and rely on people to correct you.
    • thaumaturgy 3y ago
      Well, sure. I hope the takeaway wasn't "don't bother thinking". Rather, it should have been: remember that no matter how much you think about something, you could still be wrong, so forgive others their wrongness too.
      • srinivgp 3y ago
        Only if they actually tried to think. Otherwise they don't get automatic passes for believing random things just because I am not 100% guaranteed to end up believing a correct thing.