The Wise Man Changes Opinions

To my utter surprise, this world sees it as a good thing to be steadfast and never waver in your resolve. A leader is seen as strong when they hold onto their opinions no matter what happens. A president is elected because of how confidently they can repeat the same lies, refusing to listen or change. Most people know something is wrong but can’t change now, because it would mean “losing face”.

Yes, it is hard to admit you were wrong. It takes a bit more effort to actually listen or do research, then update your views. It’s also absolutely what you should do and what we need in this world. History has been an endless cycle of people in power refusing to update their views, until people used violence/force to remove them. Only for the new people in charge to refuse changing their opinions again. It’s useless, it’s slow progress, it’s stupid.

And so I wanted to write this article to say: I was wrong about something.

When this blog was still fully Dutch, I wrote a few articles about societal problems or major news topics. Things like climate change, racism, transgenders, and so forth. It was only ~10 articles, a rare occurrence on a blog with nearly a 1,000 articles. But they were also the longest, most-researched and important articles of the whole thing.

One of the things I said was that we shouldn’t enact laws or form opinions just because of “a few bad apples”. Just because a few policemen had been racially motivated, we shouldn’t start doubting or rigorously changing the police system. (This was all about the Netherlands, by the way, not America. That’s a whole different beast.) Just because a few people cause chaos and complain, demanding certain rights because they call themselves a non-existent gender, doesn’t mean we should listen—nor that others from the same community are just as “bad”. On average, 3% of people are psychopaths, nothing to be done there.

In short, I had the view that any society would have some “bad apples”. And they should be ignored, instead of rewarded or given attention. That vocal minority, or I guess “problematic minority”, should not be a large factor in making large scale decisions. Just ignore them. Just accept that a society can’t be 100% made out of people who 100% play nice. Move on.

For the most part, I still think that.

But some time ago I learned the actual saying that this is based on. In fact, I learned that we have somehow twisted many wise sayings to mean the exact opposite.

Painful Proverbs

For example, there’s “Jack of all trades, master of none”. It’s used all the time to tell people to specialize, to get their degree in some specific field, to pick one thing and focus their life on it.

This is, however, a demonstrably stupid idea. Research shows that people are more intelligent, more creative, better at problem solving, better at seeing the whole picture, when they’ve collected lots of influences from lots of fields. In a short period, people can become “quite good” in a thing. After that, it’s only diminishing returns. It’s our capitalist society, which wants to put people into well-defined holes, that twisted the saying. Or parents, probably well-intentioned, who use it to get their kids to focus on their studies and clear the path to getting a specific job.

The actual saying is “Jack of all trades, master of none, is still better than master of one”. Which is true! Even a “master” in one thing will benefit greatly from trying other things. Most of the brightest minds in our history, such as Leonardo da Vinci, were not exceptionally gifted as far as we know. They simply had loads of interests, and they pursued them, because becoming a jack of all trades made them an expert in a lot of things. (The list of skills or “jobs” from Da Vinci is way too long to type here.)

Or, let’s take another example: “The customer is always right”. This has been used to belittle shopworkers and get them to accept whatever abuse from customers. It has been a boost to demanding and complaining customers worldwide. You have a problem in your company? Just tell the employees “suck it up, the customer is always right!”

Again, you hopefully agree with the stupidity of this. No, the customer isn’t always right. Nobody is always right. Even if the customer were right 99,9% of the time, this is a stupid way to approach anything. You should look at every situation on its own, base yourself on facts and logic, then find the right course of action. Sometimes customers are right and you made a mistake or your company has to evolve. At other times, just let that teenager working your clothing shop for minimal pay tell a client to fuck off.

The actual saying is “The customer is always right in matters of taste”. It was merely a shortcut to remember etiquette: if the customer wants to buy an ugly vase, or clothes that don’t fit, or that album from the artist autotuned to hell, let them! Don’t expect customers to buy what you would buy. Don’t try to talk them out of it or even make them feel bad for picking those items.

And so we arrive at our most important saying: “Oh, they’re just a few bad apples.”

Something I stood behind for years. It makes sense, right? Everyone knows apples can go bad. Everyone knows that this is not a universal thing—as if, in the blink of an eye, all apples went bad. It’s just one or two, and it’s not a big deal. Let them be. Don’t change your apple purchasing decisions (or whatever, we’re stretching this metaphor) for it.

The real saying? “A few bad apples spoil the whole bunch.”

Apples are famous for how quickly one bad apple can ruin the entire fruit bowl. A single bad apple, if left unattended, will very rapidly lead to nothing but bad apples.

Why?

If we step away from the metaphor, back to real life, this has two clear reasons.

• First of all, if you don’t act, the bad apples will obviously stay bad. They will keep working, keep doing the bad thing, keep discriminating. And because they are so certain of themselves and often “rewarded” for the behavior in the past, they can be incredibly prolific. A single bad apple can do the destructive work of 10 other employees.
• Second of all, everyone else now needs to “rationalize” these bad apples. Other policemen need to bend over backwards to accept these bad apples as colleagues, to explain that to others, to lie and keep up a front. Until the point you’ve turned your entire police force into bad apples, because they are permanent liars or they really start to believe it is okay.

My previous “belief” in this aspect was an example of a common mistake. I thought too narrowly. I thought about things on their own, instead of things being part of a system.

Yes, if you look at bad apples purely individually, then it’s logical to ignore them. But if you look at the entire fruit bowl, you need to get rid of them now.

And after all these years, I’ve learned that almost everyting in the world is a system. In other words, to actually solve any realistic problem you HAVE to look at the entire bowl of fruit.

In the ideal world, there would be no bad apples. I would be able to say “live and let live!”. I just ignore the silly things others say and do, everyone does whatever they want, and we’re all happy together.

But I can’t. The world isn’t ideal, but it is connected. My freedom is tightly connected to the freedom of others. One group’s quality of life depends on the actions of many other people. And even a single bad apple in that group, can ruin it for all in spectacular and surprising ways. As such, to ignore bad apples just means they spoil the whole bunch, until you are surrounded by nothing but bad apples. And you either die—giving up your freedom, or your rights, or your safety—or you get spoiled too.

What to do about it?

So, well, that’s my admission. I was wrong about this, I hope I know better now.

I would encourage anyone else to be strong enough to admit mistakes and change opinions.

Because that’s the flip side of this argument.

It’s easy now to say “remove the bad apples!” Anybody who doesn’t play nice is simply kicked out, cut off payroll, shamed online, whatever people think is necessary to “remove” them.

But … shouldn’t bad apples have the chance to change their opinion too? We learn good behavior through trial and error. Through doing something mean, and we get scolded for it, so we don’t do it again. If we merely remove anybody we don’t like, they get no chance to get better. To unspoil themselves. I don’t know, the metaphor with apples kind of ends here. Apples, as far as we can tell, have no sentience, personality or human rights ;)

If we aggressively attend all bad apples and weed them out, we’ll end up weeding out everyone. The bar for good or ethical behavior will change and change. And anybody who wasn’t introduced to that bar yet, will make a mistake at some point and be kicked out.

I find it odd how often people assume someone should “know better”. They look at someone’s age, for example, and are like “clearly he KNOWS this was wrong to do, but he did it anyway”. No! Clearly is not an argument! It is often perfectly feasible that someone never entered a situation before where he a) made the mistake; and b) was scolded for it.

For example, I grew up in a quite poor or “minimalist” household. I rarely went on a holiday, I never went out to eat, I never do anything besides “work, exercise, sleep” because there was no money or possibility. There are countless situations with unwritten rules that I have never encountered. I am certain I will accidentally offend someone the very first time I am put in a new situation. I am certain what I’ve always seen as “a friendly touch of the shoulders” will be considered “harrassment” by someone from a background completely unlike my own.

To give a specific conclusion, I believe the world needs the following things.

• If you notice bad apples, “attend” them. Don’t say “oh it’s just a few bad apples” as that’s like saying “oh I only lost one of my feet, I still have the other, no reason to visit the hospital dear!”
• But that doesn’t mean removal, or shaming, or punishment. The first step is to literally just tell them what they did wrong and why. Chances are they didn’t know, chances are something else is at play, and chances are they want to improve. Who ever wants to be seen as a bad apple?
• Only if someone repeatedly does the same immoral things, you remove them entirely.

The biggest reason this doesn’t happen, though, is because most of our “systems” are too large and incentivized by the wrong things. Many people willingly keep “bad apples” around because of money, because of cronyism, because of a major power imbalance within companies. To the people in charge, that one bad apple is just a small number on a chart, and it’s way more work to deal with it than to shove it under the rug.

As such, I will add to my recommendations what I’ve said for years.

• We need smaller communities. Smaller companies, more tight-knit groups. If a bad apple is one sore thumb sticking out from a group of only eight employees, it’s pretty hard to ignore that and not deal with it. Our brains are really only capable of handling groups up to ~20 people. We are only capable of having up to ~10 good friends. If you stay below that, self-policing and social balancing will do most of the work. If you go above, it becomes too easy to ignore/forget human beings entirely—both the bad apples and the ones calling them out. (Conversely, if the bad apple does spoil the bunch, it’s only a really tiny bunch now. Not hundreds or thousands of employees in a massive corporation.)
• We need to rigorously rethink our ideas of hierarchy, money and power. People aren’t incentivized to act morally or ethically, both the bad apples and the higher-ups who are supposed to weed them out. Actually solving such issues means putting in effort to lose money, power or status. Actually doing your work well (the “good apple”, I suppose), usually means you’re left behind and stay at the bottom of the ladder. The best way to get rid of bad apples is not to act once they’ve already spoiled, but to create the right environment that prevents spoiling in the first place.

Conclusion

I knew all these sayings for years. I knew them in their wrong form. Something that was obviously bollocks if you actually thought about it. But because it was presented as some sage wisdom, because everyone parroted it, you start to overrule your common sense and accept it. Similar to how a teacher can tell you something incredibly stupid in high school, but all you know is that adults claim to have all the answers and that kids do not, so you guess you must believe what he says!

The wise man changes opinions. They also allow others to change theirs. If people weren’t shamed for changing their mind, and weren’t put on a pedestal for “sticking to their guns”, it would be much easier to update your behavior and intelligence.

And this isn’t a “once every few years” thing. I might update my views on things daily. It should be far more normalized to be in a never-ending state of curiosity and learning. To accept “this is what I know today”, but be completely prepared to admit your mistake tomorrow.

In my experience, kids do this naturally. Humans can and will do this naturally. It’s simply cut out off us as we grow up, either by our upbringing or by the dreadful educational system. And then we get adults who think they are “done”, who think they never have to learn or change again, and so easy solutions to obvious problems are never actually carried out. Most adults would rather be wrong than admit they’re wrong.

That’s not wise. That leads to short-term stupidity and long-term serious problems. For others around you, yes, and for vulnerable people in the system. But even for those making the stupid decisions.

I don’t think a single opinion will ever be true forever, because life isn’t forever, and circumstances constantly change. There are things so obvious to us now (such as the idea of evolution) that we forget people had the wildest opinions on this for thousands of years, which didn’t change and weren’t challenged. I am certain there are things we scoff at today, which will be the “accepted” or “ethical” opinion in fifty years.

Get in the habit of constantly admitting your mistakes and updating your knowledge. It’s the right thing to do, both for yourself and for others, and it makes it far easier to actually do it. If we keep viewing “change of heart” as something bad, or some major event that only happens a few times in your life, we’re ruining it for ourselves.

Also, if you do this long enough, you’ll find you make fewer mistakes for which to apologize. Because you’ve rapidly learned all the ways to do things right.

Those were my thoughts for today,

Tiamo