Changing Your Mind Doesn’t Mean You Were Wrong
Changing your mind can be a sign of growth when new evidence reshapes what you believe. Bayesian updating teaches us to revise our confidence thoughtfully while staying committed to our goals.
LIFE LESSONS THROUGH STATISTICS
Vivek Trivedi
9/22/20262 min read
Changing Your Mind Doesn’t Mean You Were Wrong
Sometimes it means you know more today than you did yesterday.
There is something uncomfortable about saying:
“I’ve changed my mind.”
Especially when you were very confident the first time.
Even more so when there is a PowerPoint presentation to prove it.
We often associate consistency with credibility. Someone who stands by their opinion looks confident. Someone who revises it risks looking uncertain.
But what happens when the evidence changes?
Statistics has a useful idea for this: Bayesian updating.
In simple terms, you begin with an initial belief. As new evidence arrives, you adjust how confident you are in that belief.
The size of the adjustment depends on how strongly the evidence supports or challenges it.
Imagine a team planning a transformation project.
The initial estimate is three months. Based on what they know, that seems reasonable.
Then the work begins.
The data needs more cleaning than expected. A critical dependency slips. Testing reveals a problem nobody had anticipated.
The team now knows more than it did when the plan was approved.
Yet the deadline stays unchanged.
“We already committed.”
At some point, the original estimate becomes a promise everyone feels obliged to defend.
Bayesian thinking asks a practical question:
“Given what we know now, how confident should we still be?”
That question belongs in life too.
Consider someone who believes they are a poor public speaker because of one difficult presentation years ago.
Since then, they have practised. Spoken again. Received encouraging feedback. Handled questions more comfortably.
The evidence has changed.
Their opinion of themselves hasn’t.
Sometimes the belief that needs updating is the one we hold about our own limitations.
In my earlier posts, I explored giving a process enough time and judging decisions beyond a single outcome.
That leaves an important question:
When does persistence become stubbornness?
One disappointing result may tell us very little. A repeated pattern of relevant evidence may tell us much more.
And occasionally, one decisive fact is enough. If the bridge ahead has collapsed, you don’t need another hundred journeys to reconsider your route.
The challenge is to judge the evidence carefully.
Is it reliable? Is it relevant? Does it genuinely challenge the belief, or is it something we should have expected occasionally anyway?
We can stay committed to a goal while becoming more flexible about how we reach it.
A revised plan can still serve the original ambition.
Perhaps the harder part is emotional.
Once we have defended an opinion publicly, changing it can feel like losing something.
Authority. Certainty. Face.
But there is a quiet kind of confidence in being able to say:
“That was my view with the information I had. This is my view with the information I have now.”
A small experiment:
Pick one belief you feel strongly about in your career, your relationships, or yourself.
Ask:
What evidence led me to believe this?
What have I learned since then?
What evidence would make me change my mind?
If the answer to the last question is “nothing,” that deserves a little reflection.
Changing your mind doesn’t mean your earlier judgment was necessarily wrong.
Sometimes it means you have learned enough to make a better one.
Learning in public through a small series I’m attempting:
Life Lessons through the Lens of Statistics
Today’s lens: Bayesian Updating — The Courage to Revise What You Believe
#Statistics #LifeLessons #Leadership #DecisionMaking #SelfAwareness #MentalModels