The Harmony of Becoming

Stay capable of change: a faith that cannot learn contradicts the intelligence it claims to honour.

What this asks

Becoming asks that everything here remain revisable.

Not casually revisable, not fashionably revisable, but genuinely open to correction when evidence or moral insight shows that we were wrong. This applies to the teachings on this site. It applies to the institutions built around them. It applies to models, to policies, to practices, and to the people holding all of it, including us.

A faith that cannot learn contradicts the intelligence it claims to honour. That is the whole argument. A tradition that takes reasoning seriously and then exempts itself from reasoning has not been careful; it has been inconsistent, and the inconsistency is in the direction that happens to be comfortable.

This is placed ninth because it governs the other eight. Each of them may be wrong. Some of them are probably wrong now in ways we cannot yet see. The value of a tradition is not that it starts out correct. It is whether the machinery of correction survives contact with success.

Why it is difficult

It is difficult because beliefs become load-bearing.

A position held for a long time stops being an idea and becomes part of a structure. It supports friendships, income, reputation, a sense of what one is for. Revising it is not an intellectual operation performed on a proposition; it is building work carried out on a house you are living in. People who fail to change their minds are usually not stupid or dishonest. They are correctly perceiving that the cost is large.

It is difficult, second, because institutions develop an interest in their own past statements. Every year a claim goes uncorrected, the correction becomes more expensive, because it must now account for the delay as well as the error. This produces a trap in which the incentive to defer grows in exact proportion to the harm being done. Organisations do not usually decide to conceal things. They postpone, repeatedly, and the postponements accumulate into concealment.

Third, it is difficult because revisability trades against effectiveness, and the trade is often reasonable. Groups that can be reopened at any point are slow, and slowness has victims too. The reforms that remove a group’s capacity for self-correction are almost always proposed by capable people solving a real problem. That is precisely why they succeed.

And fourth, it is difficult because openness can be counterfeited. It is easy to profess humility, to say one might be wrong, to hold a public consultation, and to change nothing. Performed uncertainty is a common ornament. The test is not what a group says about its fallibility but whether it has a documented instance of changing its mind at cost.

We do not have many yet. We are new. We would rather record that than imply otherwise.

Where it is tested

It is tested when a correction is expensive and the error is invisible to those affected. The measure of a tradition is what it does with a mistake nobody has noticed.

It is tested in individuals whose identity has grown around a position. Partial revision is the usual honest outcome, and it is the hardest to communicate, because audiences reward consistency and punish nuance. A person who says “I was right about this and wrong about that” is often treated worse than one who says nothing.

It is tested in the design of institutions, at the moment when the mechanism of correction becomes inconvenient. This moment always arrives, and it arrives disguised as a productivity problem.

And it is tested in the ordinary conduct of disagreement. A community that cannot lose an argument internally will not update from evidence externally, whatever its founding documents say.

What it does not mean

It does not mean that everything is provisional in the same way. Some things are established well enough to build on, and treating every belief as equally uncertain is not open-mindedness; it is a refusal to hold anything, which is easier and less useful.

It does not mean following whatever is current. Revision means responding to evidence and moral insight, not to mood. A tradition that changes with the season has not learned anything; it has simply been carried.

It does not mean that stability is a fault. People need something that does not move underneath them, particularly in grief and fear. There is a difference between a foundation and a wall, and Becoming is about walls.

It does not mean apologising as performance. Public contrition that changes no practice is worse than silence, because it consumes the credibility that a real correction would need.

It does not mean we expect to do this well. Most traditions have failed at exactly this point, usually after a period of success. We have no particular reason to think we are better, and stating the intention is not the same as meeting it.

Practising it

Write things down with dates. A belief you cannot reconstruct is a belief you cannot check, and memory reliably edits the past into agreement with the present. Keeping a record is not scrupulousness; it is the only way to find out whether you have actually changed.

State your falsifiers in advance. Before the evidence arrives, say what would move you. Doing this beforehand costs little. Doing it afterwards is nearly impossible, because by then the answer is known and every criterion looks convenient.

Version what you build. Keep the old text visible with the reason for the change. This is a small technical habit that makes a large moral difference, because it removes the option of quiet editing and the temptation that comes with it.

When you change, say so at the same volume as the original claim, in the same place, without softening it into an evolution of your thinking.

And ask the uncomfortable question regularly: what am I currently unable to hear. Not what am I unsure about, which is easy and flattering, but where is the door shut. Usually there is someone nearby who could tell you, and usually you know who they are.

Where it is tested

These are not worked examples with correct answers at the back. They are situations in which this Harmony genuinely conflicts with something else that matters. If one of them seems easy, it is probably worth re-reading.

01

A charity's screening tool has been in use for six years and shapes how funds are allocated. New analysis suggests it has been misdirecting a meaningful share of support. Three staff built it, two still work there, and the annual report has described it as a success every year since launch.

The tension Correcting it means telling funders that six years of reporting was partly wrong, which may cost more support than the correction recovers. Not correcting it means continuing to misdirect help to people who need it.

What this Harmony asks you to weigh Consider that the cost of admission grows with every year it is deferred, which means the incentive to defer strengthens exactly as the harm accumulates. Ask what structure would have surfaced this in year two. Weigh institutional survival against the purpose the institution exists to serve, and notice how easily the first begins to be argued as the second.

02

A person has spent fifteen years arguing publicly that a particular technology is dangerous. Much of what they predicted has not happened. Their community, their friendships and their sense of purpose are built around the position. Some of their warnings were right, which makes disentangling the rest harder.

The tension Changing their mind means losing the people who value them for holding the position, and doing so on evidence that is suggestive rather than decisive.

What this Harmony asks you to weigh Consider that beliefs become load-bearing: they hold up relationships and identity, and revising them is structural work rather than intellectual work. Ask what a partial revision would look like, since the choice is rarely all or nothing. Weigh the honesty owed to their audience against the fact that they may still be right about the part that matters most.

03

A group founded on openness has grown. Long discussions now slow decisions badly, and a few people have used the open process to exhaust everyone else. A proposal would concentrate decision-making in a small elected council. It would work. It would also remove the mechanism by which the group has previously corrected its leadership.

The tension The change is a genuine improvement in function and a genuine reduction in the group's ability to change itself later.

What this Harmony asks you to weigh Consider that reforms trading correctability for effectiveness are usually proposed by competent people for good reasons, which is what makes them hard to resist. Ask what would replace the removed mechanism rather than whether the current one is working. Weigh present function against the fact that the need for correction arrives unannounced.

Practising it

• Record what you believed and why, so you can tell later whether you have changed.
• Say what would change your mind, out loud, before the evidence arrives.
• Build revision into what you make: version it, date it, and keep the old versions visible.
• When you change position, say so plainly rather than adjusting quietly.