“To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are but fools: a much fuller and more important lesson.” – Montaigne
My life appears dedicated, in some measure, to rationalizing my shortcomings. How else would I get things done? Crushed under the weight of existential dread, it’s a partial way to explain my meandering side-quests into the cognitive failures of our species.
Basically, when I’m feeling stupid, I need some company. It’s oddly cathartic, and a see-saw of confidence and doubt. Anyway, here’s an 18-minute talk by Kathryn Schulz called On being wrong. It’s about making peace with humanity’s proliferate dumbassery.
Some notes
- We understand basic fallibility, but don’t connect it to our present experiences.
- In the here and now, being wrong feels the same as being right. This is error blindness.
- Getting something wrong does not mean that something is wrong with us.
- To trust in feelings is dangerous. Righteousness ≠ correctness.
- When we encounter differing opinions, we make three erroneous assumptions:
- We assume ignorance. When that doesn’t work…
- We assume idiocy. When that doesn’t work…
- We assume malevolence.
- Our attachment to rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes and causes us to treat each other badly. And it misses the point, too.
- Contrary to our collective assumptions, our minds do not observe the world perfectly and objectively.
- Our ability to err is part of who we are and the source of our creativity.
I think she’s right
But that means she could be wrong. Insert some joke about robot-destroying paradoxes and we’re done here.
The most interesting detail she makes note of is our amazing capacity to see the world as it isn’t. Reflecting upon history or imagining the future is another species of seeing the world as it isn’t. Perhaps this is a root of our creativity. Perhaps not. I’ll let you know when it develops into a comfort, but that’s not really the point.
The universe doesn’t care what I’m comfortable with. That’s just my ego. I’m sure you can see how I’d get those confused. Beyond my personal wishes, I just wish there were a way to take a syringe-ful of this and inject it into popular culture and political life. Maybe those things might react as though it were a shot of oxygen, killing them instantly. Then again, something else might happen.
