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Don’t people who are wrong annoy you? I just read a very interesting book called Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz. Of course I read it with an eye toward figuring out how better to correct those other people who are so dangerously and aggravatingly wrong. And of course the book ended up telling me that I myself am essentially a creature of wrongness.
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz
But if we’re all wrong, I can live with that. It’s being more wrong than other people that’s intolerable. However, statistics show that most of us believe we’re more right than average, suggesting a significant if not downright dominant wrongness in our very idea of wrongness.
Even worse, we’re clearly not wrong by accident or despite the best of intentions. We go wrong for the most embarrassing of reasons — albeit reasons that might serve unrelated purposes, or which perhaps did so for distant ancestors of ours. For example, when asked to solve simple and obvious problems that a control group of similar people has no trouble solving, a disturbing number of humans will give the wrong answer if stooges planted in the room confidently give that wrong answer first.
Even more disturbingly, measurements of brain activity during this process suggest that those giving such wrong answers actually perceive them as correct following careful consideration of the question with no particular energy expended on consideration of peer relationships. In other words, people believe their own obvious B.S., even though its been blatantly placed in their minds by a bunch of fraudsters. (I am aware of the redundancy in making this observation during what has been an election year in the United States.)
A lone dissenter in the room can change the dynamic (which perhaps explains why Fox News quickly cuts off the microphone of any guest straying from the script, why a sports announcer who denounces our gun culture must be punished, why a commentator who questions Israel’s crimes must be silenced, etc.), but why should we need someone else to dissent before we can?
Well we don’t all or always. But a disturbing amount of the time a lot of us do.
Even more disturbingly, few of us are often inclined to say we are undecided between possibilities. We are inclined toward certainty, even if we have just switched from being certain of an opposing proposition. As we are confronted with reasons to doubt, it is not uncommon for our certainty to grow more adamant. And we are inclined to greater certainty if others share it. Many of us often admire, and all too often obey, those who are certain — even about things they could not possibly be certain about, even about things there is no great value in being certain about, and even about things these “leaders” have been wrong about before.
Now, I think Schulz is wrong in her book on wrongness not to place greater emphasis on the issue of why politicians change their positions. If they do so for corrupt reasons, to please their funders, we have corruption as well as indecisiveness to dislike. But if they do so in response to public pressure and we still condemn them for indecisiveness, we are condemning representative government along with it. But there is no doubt that many people — sometimes disastrously — can be inclined to prefer the certain and wrong to the hesitant and ultimately right. A baseball umpire who’s wrong but adamant is the norm, because one who corrects himself is soon out of a job.
We begin our careers of wrongness early. If you show a toddler a candy box and ask what’s in it, they’ll say candy, completely free of doubt. If you then show them that it’s actually full of pencils, and ask them what they had thought — five seconds earlier — would be in the box, they will tell you they thought it was full of pencils. They will tell you that they said it was full of pencils. Schulz says this is because young children believe that all beliefs are true. It could also be a result of the same desire to be right and not wrong that we find prevalent in adults, minus adults’ ability to recognize when the evidence of their wrongness is overwhelming. A psychologist in 1973 asked 3,000 people to rank their stances on a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” with positions on a range of social issues like affirmative action, marijuana legalization, etc. Ten years later he asked them to do so again and to recall how they thought they had answered 10 years prior. The what-I-used-to-think answers were far closer to the people’s current positions than to their actual positions of a decade back.
A decade back I would have told you that it might be valuable to work for progressive change within the Democratic Party. Now I’d tell you that’s counterproductive. Never mind if I was wrong then or am wrong now, or perhaps there’s not enough information in such brief statements to know whether I’m not perhaps wrong in both positions. The point is that I only know how misguided I used to be because my blog doesn’t edit itself, and I go back and read it. Not so with my brain. It edits itself quite efficiently. We have no idea how wrong we are, and much less idea how wrong we used to be. And we absolutely do not want to know.
“It isn’t that we care so fiercely about the substance of our claims,” writes Schulz. “It is that we care about feeling affirmed, respected, and loved.” This helps explain why a common response to being wrong is to make the situation significantly worse and facilitate new cases of being wrong in the future. Medical mistakes in our hospitals kill a great many more Americans than any of the commonly thought of but statistically trivial causes of death (like terrorism) or even the truly major causes of death (like automobiles). And hospitals typically respond with evasion, defensiveness, and denial.
We see this across the field of public policy. Alan Greenspan may admit the error of his ways on the way out the door. So may President Eisenhower, albeit without calling it a confession. Even Secretary McNamara may recant his love for warfare before he dies. But those vigorously pursuing careers usually avoid admitting wrongness. And those proven wrong are typically replaced with new people willing to push the identical mistaken policies.
Members of the public who support wrongheaded policies (the markets will take care of themselves; weapons spending makes us safer; global warming doesn’t hurt; the wealth will trickle down; etc.) often manage to continue with those policies despite their glaring debunking in particular instances or their recantation by particular officials. This is what I hoped to get some insight on in reading this book (as in reading a lot of books), and I don’t think I failed. (I wouldn’t, would I?)
Believers in Iraqi WMDs, when confronted with the facts, have in many cases nonsensically doubled down on their beliefs or, at the very least, continued to imagine the best intentions on the part of those who pushed the propaganda. Of course, a proper understanding of wrongness must lead us to accept the possibility that many who appear to be lying actually believe what they say. And the well-documented dishonesty, intentional fraud, and pressure on others to lie in the case of the Iraq War marketing campaign doesn’t change the fact that many who helped spread the lies believed them to one degree or another.
Dropping the WMD belief would mean accepting that respected leaders were either mistaken or lying. It would also mean admitting that hostile opponents in a very public and long-lasting debate were right. Hence the tenaciousness of those still believing that Saddam Hussein hid his massive stockpiles in a magical land somewhere.
A few lessons can be gathered, I think. One is that when we’re speaking with those who disagree, we should not refer to magical lands as I’ve just done, not mock, not gloat, not set up a hostile competition over who was right and who was wrong. Recounting previous instances of war supporters being wrong to illustrate the universality of the phenomenon could help or backfire depending on how it’s done. Ultimately it must be done if the same mistakes are not to be repeated forever. It’s certainly appropriate to demand that television networks stop limiting their crews of experts to those who have always been wrong before. Ultimately there must be accountability for the leaders of wrongness (regardless of the degree of honesty or good-intention involved). But there are those who will simply believe that Spain blew up the Maine even if they had never heard of that incident before in their lives, if you — their opponent — bring it up, even if you intend it as a comforting example of how others have screwed up too.
Clearly, focusing on the numerous times someone has themself been wrong is unlikely to help, but conveying the fact that we have been wrong too might. People should feel that they can remain or become secure, safe, respected, and loved while dropping their misguided belief, and without substituting a new zealotry in favor of another belief (even ours!) — that they can become more cautious, more willing to remain in doubt, and more willing to continue that way in the face of the certainty of others. Ideally, people should be urged toward better beliefs by a friendly and welcoming and large group of others. There’s no reason peer pressure can’t be put to good use, even while seeking to reduce its power.
More importantly perhaps, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If we can prevent people developing attachments to lies about Syria or Iran, we will save ourselves endless headaches trying to rid them of those lies later. If we can establish not just that Iraq was unarmed but also that Iraq’s being armed would have been no justification for bombing its people, we will shift the conversation onto favorable ground. If Syria killing Syrians with the wrong kind of weapons is understood not to justify the United States killing more Syrians with the right kind of weapons, we won’t have to engage in a fast-break competition to determine and then prove whether Syria is using weapons that the United States claims it is using.
The preceding paragraph is the theme of a book I wrote called “War Is A Lie,” which I intended for war preparedness in the sense of preparation to resist common types of lies about wars. In that book, I did not follow all of the advice above. People in fact have complained to me (a small minority of readers I should say) that the book is at times sarcastic or mocking or contemptuous. In my defense, I see a value in entertaining as well as educating those already in large agreement, as well as in reaching through as powerful a manner as possible those without ossified views on the subject. But then again, there is always and forever the possibility that I’m horrendously wrong.
11 Comments
Interesting commentary, whoever is right or wrong. But, is there not really a better word than “themself?” Im pretty sure that is not a right word.
Thanks for the post.
The “war on climate change,” is not a lie and we’re getting pummeled.
Prior to European arrivals in the U.S. the native American tribes were constantly at war. At the Little Big Horn, the Cheyenne and Sioux cooperated to smash Custer, who btw was using Crow scouts. It was the pressure of European imperialism that forced integration of native American tribal identities.
Thank you, BooRadley, for raising an interesting question of Indigenous politics and international relations before the Columbus invasion of the Great Turtle Island, soon after that also known as the Americas. Here I would say that the situation is complex, but that “forced integration of native American tribal identities” may be a curious way to describe a radical reduction in cultural and linguistic diversity which had thrived, as in many parts of the world, with a mixture of peace, war, and international cooperation.
In some parts of the Great Turtle Island, including the portion now often known as Alta California, there were in many areas modest towns or villages which established networks of trade, but not larger political entities waging war in a manner analogous to European realms such as France and England in the later medieval era or modern nation-states. “War” might mean a more or less friendly archery duel between two neighboring communities to resolve some dispute. In the kinder and gentler variety, the fighting might stop as soon as someone had been substantially wounded. The less pleasant variety might involve the deliberate killing of some prisoners, for example, with others adopted into the capturing community.
In other regions, we have examples of cooperation such as the story of the Haudenosaunee or Six Nations (literally the “Long House,” with each nation seen as a room within that larger habitation, a bit like Gorbachev’s “common house of Europe.” The Great Law of Peace had wise and generous provisions on naturalization, which after the coming of the Europeans and — involuntarily — of African slaves, would be applied to both.
At the same time, it is true as you state that there were international rivalries, and sometimes human rights violations such as the killing or torture of prisoners — common practices in Europe at this time also, but somehow seen as “savage” in the context of a different culture. Bartoleme de las Casas in the 16th century urged that the brutal practices of Spanish colonialism could not be justified as what what we should term a “humanitarian intervention” to save the Indigenous nations from practices of human sacrifice — an especially good argument in view of the burnings at the stake taking place in Europe even as de las Casas was arguing for a measure of self-determination for these nations, and for a Spanish policy based on peaceful dialogue rather than military conquest.
European practices such as bounties for scalps — whether the collectors of those scalps were Europeans or Indigenous allies — doubtless made Indigenous conflicts more destructive. And the policy of “let them kill each other” — where imported diseases did not act as a biological “neutron bomb” (the mythical variety which would kill humans by radiation without damaging property values) — was effective also in reducing cultural and linguistic diversity.
To a degree, it is true that leaders such as Tecumseh in the early 19th century sought to build international alliances against the invaders, although in a way that made traditionalists affirm their distinct national and tribal traditions. Some mixture of diversity and cooperation — a kind of Indigenous United Nations — might have been a good tradeoff, but it is very hard to get “good” results when desperately resisting a campaign which at its best might be described as political and cultural genocide, not to mention displacement and dispossession.
Peace and cooperation are quite compatible with cultural and linguistic diversity, and it is fascinating to imagine alternative histories where there was little outside intervention in the Great Turtle Island, or a normal process of peaceful trade and diplomacy. The latter scenario, sadly, might not have averted the devastation caused by introduction of European diseases in some pacific analogue of “the Columbian exchange,” but would avert the destruction and genocide that took place after acquired immunities were widespread.
In such a scenario, as the Great Turtle Island developed new means of transportation and communication (because of Indigenous developments as well as contact with the outside), some transnational or “pancontinental” elements of culture might have evolved — to supplement, rather than replace, local languages and cultures.
Authors such as Jack Forbes have discussed the sad situation where a “pan-Indian” culture exists largely in place of, rather than alongside, thriving national and local languages and traditions, although the movement of elders and younger members of the Indigenous peoples to preserve and sometimes to recover their cultural heritage continues.
To describe the pre-Columbian Indigenous world on the Great Turtle Island as one “constantly at war” seems about as accurate or otherwise as for many other regions of the world. Peace, conflict, and autonomous community life were all sides of the picture; but the tragedy of the last 520 years remains, like the European Holocaust of 1933-1945, beyond words.
I think you really hit on something when you talk about openness as long as possible for making a decision. I sometimes think that the best evidence for intelligence is toleration of ambiguity. We don’t have to Know things to make a decision about how to act in a situation. We make our best estimate and remain open to the possibility that we didn’t have all the facts, or that we judged wrongly.
Ambiguity leaves us in a position to reevaluate our decisions as data comes in from the results of our actions.
But then we need to examine being wrong about being wrong.
We quickly get into counter-factual territory….
What a great history lesson. Thank you.
Perhaps the “right answer” Wrong answer” can be illustrated with one of my own experiences. Way back, when my son was in HS, some time in late 1980′s, I attended a PTA meeting.
The HS principal was there. He gave a long speech on the evils of drug use. This was similar to like, thirty other speeches he had previously given. And continual “drug use admonishing” lectures that came home with my son in HS newsletters.
Anyway, I had my fill of these. I stood up and said, “Look. I don’t get it. Sure, no parent wants their kids to be using drugs. But this is an area of the world where probably at least half of the parents dabbled with marijuana and LSD when we were younger. We understand drug use better than you ever will. Can’t we hear you discuss other things once in a while – like increasing our support FOR art programs, or FOR sports programs, and things that give our kids things to do, rather than encouraging them to think about drugs all the time. Most teens love to do things they’re constantly told not to do.”
The auditorium fell silent when I finished. I listened to hear the proverbial pin fall. I sat down, and it seemed as though the sound of my tush meeting the chair was echoing across the national landscape. I imagined my son being expelled the next morning, or police being sent to my house that night. The principal looked amazed, and said softly, “Thank you.” But I still felt shame at my not “putting a sock in it.”
However, once the meeting ended, and I made my way out to the parking lot, about a dozen people congratulated me on saying what they had been thinking but couldn’t express. They couldn’t express it – because the way “authority” is set up in our modern era – we clearly know what is “in think” and what is “out think.” And until that first pioneer bravely goes against the flow of what is being accepted as “in think” – well, that first person will never know the result unless they do step forward and go against the perceived flow.
Most of us here know that the wrong answers are being fed to the populace at large. But we can make a difference. However small that difference, there is a ripple affect.
Thank you, elisemattu, for a great story from your own
experience of what it means to break through the
barrier of a false consensus!
Recreational drug use is a real medical issue, and
that includes alcohol and tobacco. But, as you say,
just giving teenagers lots of negative information –
some it highly inaccurate — will hardly deter them
reliably from the “forbidden fruit.”
Breaking the silence and reframing the question was
a courageous thing to do on your part. And it’s a
wonderful lesson for us all.
Good on you, elisemattu. I had a similar experience, albeit in a smaller venue: the school accountability forum. The subject was ‘abstinence only’ doctrine, deviation from which could result in funds pulled by the state. I made the case for two-track approaches for teens being able to move even back and forth from abstinence to active, needing more info, etc. You know all the reasons: std’s, pregnancies, dropout rates; but the Superintendent went utterly gaga on me, and everyone else kept silent.
The issue he went craziest on was when I mentioned that the two-track programs actually inspired conversations about values, and tried to help teens clarify them. Ack! His values were what they’d learn (of course, he ended up divorcing four wives and was an inveterate philanderer, but at least he knew how he wanted to raise his (or some wives’) kids.
@ masaccio: Bingo! Thanks, Dave. I’ve read some of those studies. ;o)
Mr. Swanson is probably the best writer on this site. This unfortunately is probably his worst post. Far smarter people than Kathryn Shulz have been pondering these issues, and framing them in much clearer terms, for thousands of years. I’m a little shocked that Mr. Swanson’s list of books to read is so meagre that he made time to read such crap. The subject is called epistemology and almost every major work in Western philosophy, save those by Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, has begun with a discussion of it.
But all too often, we leave the ambiguity at home, in a box.