I change my mind on a regular basis. I change my mind based on either my experience that contradicts my opinions or after giving my opinions due thought and finding they are in conflict with each other.
I don't know if this makes me more trustworthy or less. It is not something I find in 99 out of 100 other people I know. Most people form their views of the world before they are age 23 and they never change.
I have come up with, so far, 15 original ideas in my life. I think part of that is because I am willing to change my mind. I think it is a prerequisite for original thought that one is willing to recognize one's own intellectual failures.
As an example, in the past year I have changed my mind on a minor subject. For one year after I had a heart attack I said that exercise, meditation and good eating habits have to be pursued only for their own sake because they didn't prevent me from having a heart attack at age 74. After saying that and thinking about it for a year I came to a different conclusion. I now recommend good behavior for long-term health. But I modify it by saying you need to live near a very good hospital in your old age.
You can look at my resume and you will find two major actions in my life that I have come to regret. First, I was an organizer of school busing in San Francisco from the earliest date. I had been an aggressive activist in the civil rights movement and this seemed a logical extension.
I was completely wrong. Bringing incompetent students with a background of violence into fairly nonviolent schools resulted in white exodus from urban schools and public schools. Bused integration destroyed the public school system.
I was an early founder of the corporate social responsibility movement which is evident on my resume. Over time I was able to see that corporate social responsibility is nonsense. Every year, every month, corporate social responsibility activists added a new source of complaint about corporate behavior.
I quickly came to see It as a pathetic, ideological and trivial movement that is counterproductive to anything in human well-being.
I would say I have change my mind on roughly 50 major subjects. I am proud of that.