Who makes the better leader, a flip-flopper or a hardliner?

We tend to reject people who flip-flop. We think they are willing to say whatever seems politically expedient at the moment rather than push for what they truly believe to be the best policy. And that may well be the case. But is a pragmatist really worse than a cast-in-concrete ideologue who is incapable of recognizing any amount of incontrovertible evidence that they are wrong? Maybe our political prejudices are wrong.

Listen to this lecture on pessimistic induction, ’‘You have no idea how wrong you are.’’. So what is so wrong with changing your mind, occasionally admitting you might have previously been wrong?