> A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.”
Germany openly regrets Nazis and Hitler. In the US we admit that letting McCarthy run amok was a huge mistake. Globally billions of people admit that we were wrong to let short term economic interests steam-roll the environment for the last century.
This article feels like a “my logical-to-me sounding hypothesis must be true because I haven’t thought of any counter-examples” rationalization. It doesn’t examine any cases of groups admitting being wrong, and there are lots in history. It doesn’t ask the question why is a group being wrong is a legitimately harder conclusion to come to, even from people external to the group. There usually are debates and individuals causing things to go one way or another.