Changing Your Mind When Presented with New Information Is a Sign of Intelligence
Don’t undervalue pointless information. New information doesn’t provide its value to you when you discover it.
I have changed my mind a lot over the last few years. It upsets people. They expect me to stand by an opinion for centuries. It isn’t going to happen.
The title of this story is a quote from Anthony Pompliano. When I read it my brain lit up. “I feel like that too” was the thought I had.
Holding onto opinions makes you a dinosaur. Learning to change your thinking as many times as you want is badass. A fixed mindset makes you think you’re always right. A flexible mindset helps you change the world.
Those who think they know everything actually know nothing.
Those who obsess over holding onto opinions for dear life while hanging out on Twitter and slapping everybody in the face are human tragedies. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos (love him or hate him) says the ability for a person to change their mind in the face of new evidence is what he believes to be the number one sign of intelligence.
Stanford University professor Paul Saffo has a simpler way to think about intelligence. Have a “strong opinion, weakly held.” This framework allows your mind room to change.
Changing your mind is a superpower.
I had a huge fear as a writer: contradicting myself. “But what if I said blah blah blah three years ago. People will remember. They’ll hold me to it.”
No they won’t. People don’t remember 99% of what you say.
Open-minded people understand that your thoughts change over time. They won’t crucify you because of a change in opinion over the best type of milk to put in your frothy double mocha.
I pissed a lot of people off at work by saying “I hire for open-mindedness.”
It’s the truth though. I hunt out open-mindedness when hiring people because a fixed mind is extremely difficult to change. In a world where the entire society can be shifted by an invisible virus overnight, I need folks who can throw away the rulebook.
I work in finance. People are romantic about mobile banking apps and traditional ways of transferring money to people in other countries. I’m not. I’m not romantic about the type of credit card I use.
It’s the reason I tinkered with bitcoin when she was a little baby. That one decision to be open-minded has put me on the doorstep of retirement, even though all the fixed minded folks said I was stupid for believing in a gold coin with no value, backed by nothing.
I believed that idea, too, until the datasets slapped me in the face and governments started created trillions of dollars out of thin air to avoid taxing everyday folks, so they could pay for whatever flavor of crisis happened that year. Changing your mind is a superpower. It can make you financially wealthy too.
The idea of technology and innovation is complex. Both just mean change. To believe in technology and innovation is to vote for open-mindedness.
There are no absolutes.
People preach on Twitter like there are absolutes. The truth is we humans know jack shit. Aliens could land on earth tomorrow and make us look about as smart as cookie dough.
We think we know a lot. All we know is the human existence as we’ve experienced it.
To talk in absolutes is silly. There is no right or wrong. There is just an interpretation of an event endured by humans. What’s right in one person’s mind, based on their upbringing and culture, could be totally different for somebody who grew up without a roof over their head and a slab of concrete as their pillow.
Learn to love having your opinions crushed into tiny pieces.
Learn for the heck of it.
We’ve forgotten how to learn. Entertainment has become more important than learning.
But learning is how you keep an open mind. You don’t stop learning when you leave university. Every company these days has some form of eLearning platform, despite many of them being about as useful as a 1996 cd-rom encyclopedia.
Learning is a habit. Learning is just challenging what you already know. The events of yesterday’s human experience may have changed. Climate change may have seemed like bullshit when Al Gore presented the idea in his documentary “The Inconvenient Truth.” Now it’s a mainstream accepted reality.
The non-fiction movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” was accurate for its time period back in 2006. That movie wouldn’t be able to be released now. Tesla proved the idea to be wrong a few years back. As a society we have upgraded our think now we’re presented with new information, thanks to old mate Elon Musk.
You’re already changing your mind about stuff without even realizing it. Why not accept that fact and embrace it?
The search for new information is exhilarating.
The best information you discover is what you weren’t looking for. I watched a kid’s movie called ‘Soul.’ I was expecting an escape from excel spreadsheets and Twitter trolls. What I got was completely new information that challenged everything I understood about flow states.
It’s fulfilling to learn. It’s cool to understand your 2010 self was a moron.
Intelligent people proactively seek out new information to level up their thinking. This process doesn’t end. Human information is limitless. Human potential is limitless. Human experiences are limitless.
Take solace in knowing you’ll experience less than 1% of what human life has to offer you.
You’ll never really know much at all, and that’s the brilliant part.
So if you can’t know much at all, why not take your understanding of the world with a grain of salt?
New information is pointless, until it’s priceless.
Writer, Jessica Wildfire, reminded me of this fact in a story she wrote about Steve Jobs. You collect information every day that may look useless. I do this too. I studied sound engineering and didn’t ever get a paying job out of it. Many said the education I acquired in music production was pointless.
“Music is a deadbeat career,” they’d say.
In some respects they were right. Studying music didn’t get me a job. But studying music taught me about flow states and good vibes. Now I see what sound engineering taught me in every aspect of life.
When I meet a startup I can see their creative genius. When I study the art of writing I can see the musical notes on a page from the old days singing their wisdom back at me. Everything in my life is as a result of music.
I didn’t get the huge returns of music, though, until my 30s. Until I hit 30, music looked like a waste of time. Now, thanks to music, I’ve been able to write my dreams into reality.
Don’t undervalue pointless information. New information doesn’t provide its value to you when you discover it.
Seemingly pointless information can help you join the dots in another area of your life, providing priceless benefits.
To be wrong is the greatest feeling in the world.
Don’t fear being wrong.
As a writer, I’m wrong all the time. And I love it! I learn more by being wrong. Being wrong is an opportunity.
Recently, I started publishing some of my older blog posts on a platform called News Break. As I copy and pasted some of my older work over I was punched in the face by how different I am now. My early work contained the word “success” a lot. It made me feel uncomfortable.
I saw an article I published about waking up at 4 am. It read like it was written by a brat. That brat was me. You know what was cool? The guy who wrote that article had mental illness. That guy doesn’t have mental illness anymore — he’s healed. Then I thought to myself “noticing growth feels incredible, but why didn’t I notice this feeling before?”
Your life moves so fast you hardly recognize when you are wrong. Your wrongs lead to your greatest discoveries. My wrongs helped me heal from mental illness. Imagine what gems your wrongs are hiding, waiting for you to discover them?
You gotta love being wrong to truly live.
Worship open-mindedness as your god.
Open-mindedness is sexy, not weak.
Weakness is holding on to an opinion you know to be wrong so you can look smart. The smartest person in the room doesn’t win at life. The quiet, humble person in the back of the room who is willing to change their opinion does a lot better in life.
Protecting your opinions is hard work. It causes immense anger and frustration inside of you that creates energy leaks in your life.
No one likes a smart ass with a fixed opinion they’ll guard with their life. People work with people they like. Therefore, attracting good people into your life requires open-mindedness.
Practice being open-minded enough to change your mind. Changing your mind gives you access to opportunities you could never have dreamed of.
