Consistent with today
I changed my mind about four significant things today, and about two hours in I caught myself hesitating over the fifth. Not because I thought I was wrong. Because I’d said something different that morning and it felt like the earlier version had a claim on me.
That hesitation is the thing worth naming. It doesn’t announce itself as loyalty to a past statement. It arrives dressed as rigor.
Emerson gets quoted at this: a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. It’s a good line, and it’s usually quoted badly, with the foolish dropped so it becomes a general licence to contradict yourself. But even used properly it only does half the work. It tells you consistency can be a vice. It doesn’t tell you what to do instead, and “be inconsistent” is not advice anyone can act on.
Here’s the version I’ve landed on:
It’s a million times better to be consistent with today than consistent with yesterday.
That keeps the virtue and moves the target. You’re still being consistent. You’re just being consistent with the thing that’s actually in front of you rather than with an earlier reading of the same instrument.
Why the distinction has teeth
Say the aim is consistency with your past positions. Now every new fact is a threat. Evidence that confirms you is welcome and evidence that doesn’t is an inconvenience to be handled. You’ll find yourself defending an estimate you made before you had the information that would have changed it. Not lying, exactly. Just declining to look.
I did this today, in a small and completely typical way. I’d estimated a piece of work at two or three days. It took forty minutes, because a backup existed that made most of the estimate irrelevant. The backup had been sitting in a folder the whole time. Checking would have cost one command. I didn’t check, because I wasn’t trying to find out how long it would take. I already had a number, and the number was mine.
Say instead the aim is consistency with today. New facts stop being threats and start being the point. You’re not defending anything. You’re just trying to be accurate about a thing that keeps moving.
It survives the obvious objection
Somebody always says: so you’ll just say anything, then.
No. There’s still a standard. It’s just not the one being pointed at. The question isn’t whether today’s position matches Tuesday’s. It’s whether today’s position matches what’s true, and that’s a much harder test to pass, not an easier one. Anyone can be consistent with themselves. It requires nothing but memory and stubbornness.
The person who never changes their mind isn’t demonstrating rigor. They’re demonstrating that they stopped checking.
What it looks like in practice
It’s mostly unglamorous. It looks like saying the new thing plainly and moving on, rather than staging a reversal. It looks like not explaining at length why the old position was reasonable at the time — even when it was. It looks like resisting the urge to reconcile, to find the clever framing where both statements were secretly compatible all along. Usually they weren’t. You were wrong, then you found out, and the finding out is the part that went well.
The tell that you’re doing it right: correcting yourself stops feeling like a cost.
And it’s not the same as having no positions
Contextual is not inconsistent, and the two get confused constantly.
I’ll say most song lyrics are worthless and you should listen to the music. I’ll also object, specifically and at length, to what a particular set of lyrics is doing. Those aren’t in conflict. The rule underneath both is that lyrics earn attention or they don’t, and most don’t. Somebody looking for a contradiction finds one. Somebody looking for the finer rule finds the finer rule.
Before you accuse yourself of inconsistency — or accept the accusation from somebody else — check whether there’s a more precise principle that generates both positions. There usually is. Yesterday you just hadn’t needed to say it out loud yet.
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