It's the ability to quickly abandon previous beliefs in favour of new ones when you come across new and more accurate information. This is harder to do than it seems. It's often easier to fool yourself into believing a lie than admit you were wrong.

Even Albert Einstein, a man who had to test, update and rewrite his own beliefs constantly in order to come closer to the truths of physics was not immune to this malady of stubbornly holding on to outdated beliefs.

In stark contrast to his own rational and precise brand of physics, the quantum theory with its foundations laid in statistics and probabilities, was practically heresy to him. So adamant was he against the theory that in 1927 he said "One cannot make a theory out of a lot of maybes". Nowadays, quantum theory is undoubtedly an integral part of physics.

But what about conviction? When we hear this word we think of someone who is determined and focused. While this could be true, what people call their "conviction" can sometimes be a simple lack of willingness to change their minds.

Retrospectively, we probably all think we're wise individuals who update our beliefs accurately according to the experiences we've had and the knowledge we've gained. However, it's a lot harder to look into the future and believe that we'll change significantly from who we are today. This is called the "end of history" illusion in psychology. The reason why imagining our future selves as someone drastically different from our current selves is so difficult is because it hurts to be wrong.

Building beliefs takes time and effort. If we simply look around us, it's not difficult to see people who are blindsided by their own stubbornness to accept the truth. We see this in people who stay in broken relationships, borderline gambling investors, and people's extreme political opinions. We may think these people to be fools. But if we take a closer look at ourselves, our own lack of skepticism of our own beliefs may be an indicator that we are just as foolish.

The founder of Visa, Dee Hock, said "A belief is not dangerous until it turns absolute". This is the point of no return when a person is no longer able to update his beliefs even when the truth is staring him in the face. As a good rule of thumb, we should all question our beliefs, especially the ones that we believe are sure to be true. Probably.