How often are you accused of being judgemental? I hear it quite often, so perhaps that says more about me than anything else.

That said, I’ll happily admit that I’m a judgemental person, and I’ve never understood why the word has come to be a pejorative one. To be judgemental is to use your judgement. Suitable synonyms would be wisdom or discernment, and these words have no negative connotations.

If I’m passing judgment and I’m not wearing a horsehair wig (or even if I am for that matter), then I’ve weighed up the pros and cons, and on balance, I’ve come down on one side or the other.

Thus, when I call someone a twat, I tend to mean it.

Except when I don’t.

Using one’s judgement is a good thing. It’s a fundamental foundation of rational reasoning, and poor alliteration aside, it shouldn’t be stigmatised as anything but.

So, this concludes what has turned into a mini trilogy; from I Don’t Know, through changing your mind, to using your judgment. The pedants among you may have noticed my interchangeable spelling of the J word, but that’s because I don’t know which one is correct, nor does Word seemingly. I thought it definitely had an E in it, but then I changed my mind. And now I think that it looks better like this: Judgemental.

You’re allowed to change your mind.

Equally, changing your mind doesn’t make you a hypocrite. I’m a big fan of The Daily Show, but they use a technique that is disingenuous at best, and unjust at worst. It makes for good telly, but when a Senator says something one week, is it really fair to pore over a dozen old excerpts and pick out moments when they seem to contradict themselves?

Changing your mind is a good thing, if you have balanced up the evidence and decided that it alters your opinion on a matter. Of course, you can be wrong and change your mind and still be wrong. You can be right and change your mind and then be wrong. You can be right and change your mind and still be right, and obviously you can be wrong and change your mind and then be right.

But the act of changing your mind doesn’t make you automatically wrong.

I once watched a debate between the heinous twunt George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens. Mr Galloway noted that Mr Hitchens had once been opposed to the first Iraq War and was now supportive of the second intervention. Pointing this fact out seemed to Mr Galloway enough of an argument that Mr Hitchens was now wrong to be supportive. I believe he even said “You say you were wrong then, doesn’t that make it even more likely you are wrong now.”* No.

But it’s this fear of being accused of hypocrisy that drives people to cling on to beliefs that have been proved wrong. Fallibility is a good thing. I’ve been wrong about many things in the past, and I’m still wrong about many more now, I’m sure. You should reserve your right to change your mind at any given moment. If someone points out that you have changed your mind, it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “Yes, I said that at the time, but on balance, I now believe I was wrong, and that what I’m now saying is correct.”

That’s the very essence of science. But I might be wrong.

There’s no need to tie yourself up in intellectual knots in an effort to remould your old position into your new one. It doesn’t save face, it simply dilutes your own argument. It is this goalpost moving that is the essence of superstition, quackery and theology.

*Or something similar.

I don’t know.

People should be happy to utter that much more often than we do. I don’t know is a wonderful phrase. It doesn’t, as you might think, betray your stupidity – what does that is making up an answer to disguise said fear of stupidity – it simply means “I don’t know”.

I don’t know how to put up a shelf for example. I don’t know how to cope with the unending cycle of rejection in my life. And I don’t know why people don’t say I don’t know enough.

There seems to be a tendency to simply be contrary. One may not know the alternative to capitalism or big agri-business, so it’s much easier to just be anti all of it. Anti-globalisation is just the nihilistic temper tantrum of a hormonal teenager. It offers up no alternative, and instead does the equivalent of stomping up the stairs and slamming its bedroom door. Being anti-something usually leads to smashing a window as sixty-eight photographers take your picture, then moaning about how your message is being buried by a media more interested in showing the violence. If you don’t have a message other than “booo”, there’s nothing to report. You might as well chain yourself to something and hold up a sign that says “Careful Now” or “Down With This Sort Of Thing”.

The left leaning movements used to stand for something, whether it was progressive taxation, liberty or universal human rights, now they just seem more interested in sticking a finger up at things. These are hardly new thoughts I know, but this is just a thought vomit.

The most vile people who won’t say I Don’t Know are the anti-vaccination crowd. We don’t know what causes autism, but we do know what doesn’t cause it. Instead of accepting this, and attempting to help find an answer, they threaten the herd immunity and actually put lives at risk.

A newborn baby in Australia died of Whooping Cough recently. She was born into a community that had a low uptake of vaccinations and was too young to be immunised. Herd immunity would have protected her, and in a documentary about this case, an anti-vaxxer had the despicable temerity to claim Whooping Cough isn’t fatal. She clearly doesn’t know.

Not knowing something is fine, but being too self-centred to think you know better than people who do know can be tragically dangerous.