An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things. Bryant H. — Bryant H. McGill

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things. Bryant H.

Author: Bryant H. McGill

Insight: We live in a culture that treats being wrong like a personal failing rather than a learning opportunity. Most of us have spent years protecting our ego by doubling down on half-baked opinions or pretending we always knew what we were talking about. But the smartest people you know probably do something different: they're genuinely curious about where they've gotten things wrong. This doesn't mean having no opinions or being wishy-washy. It means holding your beliefs loosely enough that new information can actually change your mind. When someone corrects you or you stumble across evidence that contradicts what you thought, there's that split-second choice: defend the old belief, or update it. The intelligent move—and honestly, the braver one—is to let yourself be wrong and move forward with better understanding. The real insight here is that this approach compounds over time. Each small correction isn't humiliating; it's a course correction that makes you sharper, more credible, and better equipped to actually solve problems. The people who refuse to admit errors don't get smarter. They just get more invested in protecting something that was never worth protecting in the first place.