What Would Change Your Mind?: On Certainty, Evidence, and the Courage to Be Wrong (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798199776691)

What would it take to change your mind?

It is one of the most important questions a person can ask - and one of the hardest to answer honestly.

In What Would Change Your Mind?, Mark L. Morrissey explores why intelligent, decent, well-intentioned people can become absolutely certain about things they have not truly examined. Through the recurring figure of Bill - a composite of people we all recognize, and sometimes resemble - the book examines how certainty hardens, how beliefs become identity, how communities reward conviction, and how poor evidence can feel overwhelming from the inside.

Drawing on decades of experience as a scientist and professor, Morrissey argues that the problem is not simply ignorance. The deeper problem is unexamined certainty: the feeling that we know, even when our confidence has outrun the evidence.

With clear prose, memorable examples, and practical tools such as "the honest percentage," this book shows how probabilistic thinking can help us hold strong beliefs without turning them into fixed identities. It explains why familiar arguments often fail, why smart people can reason badly, and why changing a mind usually requires more than better facts.

This is a book about evidence, humility, identity, and the courage to be wrong. It is for anyone who has watched a friend or family member become unreachable - and for anyone honest enough to wonder where they might be unreachable too.

A clear, humane guide to thinking more carefully in a world that rewards certainty.