How To Be Righter Than Others?

One of the things I do a lot is argue with people. I do that because I feel I am usually righter than others. I think if that has to be correct it would be because I am very quick at identifying a weakness in my position and changing it if warranted by an intelligent argument. For me purpose of argument is to test my understanding of a topic, and not really to prove the other wrong. I consider it a failure to not get an insightful/intelligent argument made by my opponent in an argument, and it pains to see my opponents constantly trying to overlook all the pointed attacks I make against theirs.

This this post goes very well with what I believe in, Jeff Bezos said the following in a talk with 37signals staff.

He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often
changed their minds. He doesn't think consistency of thought is a
particularly positive trait. It's perfectly healthy -- encouraged, even --
to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

He's observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their
understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they'd already solved.
They're open to new points of view, new information, new ideas,
contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't have a well formed point of view, but it
means you should consider your point of view as temporary.

What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time? Someone
obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can't
climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles,
they're often wrong most of the time.

I think it is political debates that made changing positions such a taboo by equating a person who changes his opinion based on new eveidence and observations with a fickle minded, untrustable person. "If he changed his mind before my friends, how can we trust him to not change his mind in future and do opposite of what he has said. We can not trust such a person."

Good rhetoric technique. I think the proper way to counter it is being very proactive about documenting changing positions if it was made publicly. There should be an "listening and thinking" stage when one must weigh in all arguments about any position, and only after thinking it through they should settle on any position. I think it is also important to explain why one arrived at any position, with the pros and cons, how each con was rejected.

If people do not do that, explain properly their positions, preferably in written documents, and without explaining positions, do advocacy based on those positions, and then eventually change their positions, and possibly advocate different things based on those changed position, then they set up for the redicule, and deserve the "untrustworthy" title.

Two sincere intelligent people only ever differ because their assumptions are different. We are not always aware of our assumption. May be law is supreme, or may be freedom is. Or is it morality? Is justice more important or forgiveness? Means matter or only the end results? Are principles everything, or should we be pragmatic? And many more.

So the only way to be correct more often than not is to constantly evaluate all your positions, figure out what assumptions you are living by, figure out inconsistencies of those assumptions with each other, if any, and inconsistencies of those assumptions with popular opinion, and from the opponents in arguments. And be quick in adjusting.