Changing minds

This maybe slightly off topic for this list (although our topic is quite broad here) but...

I stumbled upon the internet site for the World Question Center where a group of academics (mostly US it seems) answer the following question: "What have you changed your mind about?"

There are a lot of responses, some short and some not so short, and I just skimmed over a handful but I found it really interesting to see what people would admit to changing their mind about and why they decided to change, actually it was refreshing in an age where it seems people are polarized on every issue and simply talking past each other. Most of the contributors that I read work in science and technology but a surprising (to me) number of their comments discussed religion.

I promised to post more on community and will hopefully deliver soon. As I'm writing this it occurs to me that the ability to discuss issues and safely change your opinion would be a mark of the type of learning community that I hope exists at universities. Hopefully at school "flip-flopping" is understood to be a potential and honorable result of genuine engagement with ideas and not as a sign of weakness or disloyalty.