The Fear of the Update
There is a particular social awkwardness that comes with changing a position you've publicly held. Whether it's a political opinion, a professional stance, or something as small as a restaurant recommendation, the reversal feels exposing — like evidence that you weren't thinking clearly before, or worse, that you can be swayed.
We've built a culture that treats consistency as a virtue and changed minds as weakness. Politicians are "flip-floppers." Public figures who update their views are accused of opportunism. The result is a world full of people defending positions they no longer actually hold, because the cost of the public update feels too high.
What Changing Your Mind Actually Signals
The physicist Richard Feynman said something worth returning to: "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." A mind that cannot be changed is not a strong mind — it's a closed one. And closed minds, however confident they appear, are not reliable guides to reality.
Changing your mind in response to new evidence is precisely what good thinking looks like. The scientist who updates their model when the data changes is not being inconsistent — they are doing exactly what they should. The same principle applies outside the lab.
How to Do It With Grace
There's a difference between changing your mind and simply abandoning a position under social pressure. The first is intellectual honesty; the second is capitulation. Here's how to tell the difference and communicate it clearly:
- Name what changed. "I used to think X. After encountering Y, I now think Z." The explicit explanation prevents the update from looking like drift or weakness.
- Don't over-apologize. You don't need to flagellate yourself for the old position. Acknowledging that you thought differently before is sufficient. Excessive apology turns the update into a performance.
- Be specific about what you still believe. A changed mind isn't a blank slate. Showing that you've updated one view while maintaining related ones demonstrates that this is genuine thinking, not wholesale capitulation.
The Rarer Skill: Updating Publicly Without Being Asked
Most of us update our private beliefs fairly regularly. We absorb new information, shift our views, quietly let go of positions that no longer hold. What almost no one does is volunteer this update publicly — especially when no one has challenged them.
This voluntary correction is, in my view, one of the most underrated marks of intellectual character. It says: I care more about being right than about appearing consistent. It invites others to do the same. And in a small way, it pushes back against the culture of performative certainty that makes honest thinking so difficult.
A Personal Note
I have written things I no longer agree with. Some of those things are still out there, findable. I don't think the solution is to delete them — they're part of a record of genuine thinking at a particular time. But I do think the solution is to keep writing, keep updating, and be explicit when the view has shifted.
The alternative — holding a fixed public position long after you've privately moved on — is a kind of lying. And it's not worth it.