But it isn’t. because he stated he was wrong. Which means that he negated his own previous opinion.
You’re basically respecting the name, not the human being. Because the Rambam said so, it has to be right. But personally, if the Rambam is as great as you say he is (which I obviously won’t doubt) then I’ll trust his judgment as far as whether his OWN opinions are good. I won’t let it come down to what the four-letter acronym said.
Put it this way- let’s say I, a normal eleventh grade (actually almost twelfth-grade– YES!) girl were to give you my opinion on, say, the whole NSA thing. Then, I realized that I changed my mind. My other opinion was ridiculous and wrong, based on information with missing pieces. I said that this new, diametrically opposed opinion was my new opinion and correct, as opposed to the other one. If you said that wow, writersoul is so awesome that she’d never say something wrong, so both of her opinions must be right- I’d be a bit ticked, as I specifically changed my mind, and the judgment that you respect, which decided that my second opinion is right, has already decided that the first is wrong. By saying that both are right, you’re saying that the CONTENT of what I’m saying doesn’t matter, but rather only the person saying it matters.
I’m not actually comparing myself to the Rambam actually- I’m just trying to show how saying that they’re both right is actually a disservice to the Rambam and not a compliment at all.
This doesn’t, incidentally, necessarily mean that I buy into the whole “he-changed-his-mind” business- but even if I did, it wouldn’t make sense.