Being Wrong

Adventures in the Margin of Error

by Kathryn Schulz

Number of pages: 416

Publisher: Ecco

BBB Library: Psychology and Strengths

ISBN: 9780061176043



About the Author

Schulz is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and the Nation. She has reported from different parts of the world.

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Editorial Review

In our collective imagination, error is associated not just with shame and stupidity but also with ignorance, indolence, psychopathology, and moral degeneracy. Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list. It is our meta-mistake: we are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.   Given this centrality to our intellectual and emotional development, error shouldn’t be an embarrassment, and cannot be an aberration. On the contrary, Benjamin Franklin observed in a quote about truth and errors that wrongness is a window into normal human natureinto our imaginative minds, our boundless faculties, our extravagant souls.  

Book Reviews

" In this lovely book about human mistakes the sickeningly young, forbiddingly clever and vexingly wise American journalist Kathryn Schulz doesn't cite Aristotle, but he is a kindred spirit. Where Aristotle saw the value in a painful, ostensibly demeaning emotion, Schulz argues passionately for the value of error. The experience of being wrong, she argues, helps to make us better people, with richer lives." The Guardian

"Schulz begins with a question that should puzzle us more than it does: Why do we love being right? After all, she writes, “unlike many of life’s other delights — chocolate, surfing, kissing — it does not enjoy any mainline access to our biochemistry: to our appetites, our adrenal glands, our limbic systems, our swoony hearts.” Indeed, as she notes, “we can’t enjoy kissing just anyone, but we can relish being right about almost anything." The New York Times

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Wisdom to Share

Like many fears, the fear of being wrong stems partly from a lack of understanding. The pessimistic model of error tells us that wrongness is unpleasant, but it doesn’t tell us why, and it has nothing at all to say about errors that don’t turn out to be disagreeable.

Like many fears, the fear of being wrong stems partly from a lack of understanding. The pessimistic model of error tells us that wrongness is unpleasant, but it doesn’t tell us why, and it has nothing at all to say about errors that don’t turn out to be disagreeable.

Unfortunately, as proponents of the pessimistic model of wrongness will be quick to point out, the reassuring notion that error yields insight does not always comport with experience.

Sometimes, being wrong feels like the death of insight—the moment when a great idea or a grounding belief collapses out from under us.

And sometimes, too, our mistakes take too great a toll to be redeemed by easy assurances of lessons learned.

Of the very long list of reasons we can get things wrong, the most elementary of them all is that our senses fail us.

Life is short, and most of us don’t want to spend any more of it than absolutely necessary trying to independently verify the facts that others have already tested and verified.

Depending on second-hand information makes our lives both much more efficient and much more interesting than they would otherwise be.