How to change one’s mind

Ian Leslie has written a brilliant essay about changing one’s mind. His subject is this brilliant essay about changing one’s mind, by someone who has changed his mind about gay marriage. Read all of both essays, but especially this bit from Leslie’s:

We also tend to stick doggedly to our own view, come what may. We pretend to be open to evidence, will go to amazing lengths to fit the evidence to our pre-existing beliefs, rather than the other way around. I stopped taking Tony Blair’s antagonists in the media seriously (well OK, perhaps I never did) after seeing them build Lord Hutton up as an incorruptible man of granite who would finally impale that slippery Blair on the rusty sword of truth – and then, following the publication of his report, which inconveniently exonerated Blair and his government from any wrongdoing, immediately denounce him as an establishment dupe. Blair’s donation of his entire book proceeds to charity somehow reinforced rather than undermined the view of the same people that the former PM was money-grabbing and cynical.

Right on cue, the Daily Mail, only a month late, has deigned to correct a misleading article:

An article on 29 May 2012 referred to former PM Tony Blair’s £5m earnings from his memoirs but omitted to add that this money was generously donated to the Royal British Legion. We are happy to set the record straight.

Update: It would seem that this is an online correction only. There is nothing in the print edition of the Daily Mail today.

Photograph of Tony Blair guest-editing the London Evening Standard today

Recent Posts on Eagle Eye

• "The Continuity of the State"
• Why the Treasury thinks the deficit rose last year
• Men of Secrets II
• Men of Secrets
• The Dawn of Time

• greggf

  Isn’t “we are happy to” and its variations on the banned list JR?

• Pacificweather

  Learn the lesson John, Blair is a scoundrel and Hutton was his stooge. It’s all there in print before your very eyes.

• porkfright

  You can quote whom you like, Mr.Rentoul. It will in no way affect what very many people think.

• Silican

  So some fool, who never took Blair’s antagonists seriously, chooses the information which confirms his bias to prove his bias was not a bias after all. What a “brilliant” analysis.

• tykejim

  Surely that is exactly what Leslie is saying?

• http://twitter.com/JohnRentoul John Rentoul

  If you had read the print, you would know that the opposite is all there before your very eyes.

• Pacificweather

  There has to one other person as crazy as you. No one ever said Hutton was incorruptible. That’s how the man demonstrates he is a fantasist like you and Mr. Blair. So, whatever he’s says, it it self evident that the opposite is true. He probably believes in WMD even today. Maybe you do too.

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Ray-Hunter/663316771 Ray Hunter

  Leapards cannot change their spots, and this thatcherite wolf that took over the labour party and ruined it, will never change, and should never be allowed any where near the offices of power again, three doses of thatcherite sh*te tearing this country to pieces is enough for anyones life time.