STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
Warren Buffett on Mindset & Perspective
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
—Warren Buffett
Investor, business leader, and philanthropist
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Meet the Voice Behind the Quote
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett is an American investor, business leader, and philanthropist known for leading Berkshire Hathaway and for emphasizing rational decision-making, temperament, incentives, and long-term thinking. This quotation describes a familiar cognitive tendency: people often interpret new evidence in ways that preserve existing conclusions. In psychology, related patterns are commonly discussed under confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.
Reading Between the Lines
Changing a belief is psychologically expensive. A conclusion may be connected to identity, past decisions, relationships, status, or years of accumulated argument.
When new information arrives, the mind therefore has an incentive to make it fit what is already there. Evidence that agrees feels persuasive; evidence that conflicts receives immediate scrutiny.
Buffett’s observation is useful because the tendency is easier to see in other people than in ourselves.
The antidote is not to become endlessly uncertain. We need working conclusions. The goal is to make those conclusions revisable when sufficiently strong evidence appears.
Intellectual honesty asks a difficult question: what information would actually cause me to change my mind? If the answer is “nothing,” we may no longer be evaluating a belief. We may be defending one.
What You Can Take From This
Choose a belief you hold strongly and deliberately look for the strongest credible evidence against it.
Do not search for the weakest opposing argument. Find the version that an informed person on the other side would recognize as serious.
Then ask whether you judge that evidence by the same standard you use for evidence supporting your view. The exercise is not designed to force a change of mind. It tests whether change remains possible.
Consider This
What belief do you defend most quickly when contradictory information appears? What evidence, if true, would genuinely cause you to revise it?
Let This Stay With You
Growth in judgment requires noticing our tendency to interpret new evidence in ways that preserve conclusions we already prefer.
Source & Attribution
Attributed to Warren Buffett; exact primary source uncertain
Common Attribution
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