Why I Love Being Wrong
[Music]
[Applause]
when i tell myself that i love being
wrong
that is admittedly a kind of coping
mechanism that i use
to help me deal with the reality that
i’m wrong a lot
and i’m wrong a lot for a lot of various
reasons
but i have one particular life strategy
that i think causes me to be wrong
more often than usual you see the way
that i approach
problem solving is with a kind of rapid
fire technique
which allows me to iterate through
possible solutions
very quickly and rule them off as they
don’t work
in my profession i often get to help
people problem solve technical issues
what happens a lot of times is that
someone approaches me with a problem
they’ve exhausted the solutions that
they’re willing to attempt and they’re
hoping that i can provide them with the
correct solution
in truth many times i do not know the
correct solution any more than they do
however i jump in i begin trying
solutions
i cross them off as they don’t work and
i move on
and i like to tell the people that i’m
helping that i don’t necessarily know
the right answer
but we can find everything that doesn’t
work together
and then maybe we’ll both know the right
answer for next time
i basically get to be professionally
wrong
telling myself that i love being wrong
may or may not
truly reflect how i feel on the matter
but it helps me to create
a mental framework that allows me to
routinely
be wrong without getting my feelings
hurt
basically i know that being wrong is
part of the process of growth
and i think to myself if i’m not making
mistakes
and i’m not crossing off incorrect ideas
then i’m not trying enough new things
so this is where i get the idea that i
love being wrong
in my mind being wrong means that i have
a new piece of information the incorrect
answer
and that i’m making progress toward more
complete and accurate knowledge
so i’d like to note at this point that
i’m not some sort of problem-solving
superstar and in fact i’m done talking
about myself
what i’d like to do is explore this
mental framework of putting a value on
being wrong
in the hopes that maybe someone else
will find it useful
so here it goes i think that many people
have a tendency
to view being right and being wrong as a
zero-sum game
and that that tendency is a detriment to
the problem-solving process
in a zero-sum game one person’s gain
is exactly equal to another person’s
loss
if i bet you one dollar that
circumstance a
will result in outcome x and the actual
outcome proves to be y
then i will lose one dollar and you will
gain one dollar
no new wealth or utility has been
created
or lost the total net of the transaction
is zero in terms of being right or wrong
a zero-sum situation might look like
this
let’s say i believe it is going to rain
tomorrow and you believe that it is not
when tomorrow comes if it does not rain
then i am wrong
and you are right in the grand ether of
being right and wrong
i lose one point and you gain one point
the fact of raining or not raining does
not have
an inherent value it is not positive or
negative
maybe we were going golfing maybe our
crops needed water
the outcome does not have an intrinsic
value
i was simply wrong and you were simply
right
and i think that many people tend to
view every opportunity
that they have to be right or wrong as
this zero-sum
scenario but let’s say instead
that i believe it is going to rain
tomorrow and you believe that it is not
but this time we’re basing our beliefs
off of some piece
of evidence that we both have access to
we believe it is or isn’t going to rain
tomorrow
based on the observation of a change in
barometric pressure
when tomorrow comes regardless of who is
right
and who is wrong we both gain knowledge
on the implications
of the evidence we observed maybe one of
us
loses a point and one of us gains a
point
but new wealth or utility is created
by understanding the outcome of our
predictions
thus we have a net positive non-zero sum
in the 19th century there was a
physician and scientist
who proposed that doctors not washing
their hands prior to performing medical
procedures
was leading to the deaths of patients
specifically
mothers giving birth this physician
observed that
in a clinic wherein midwives performed
births
there was a much lower rate of maternal
mortality than a clinic operated only by
physicians and medical students
he eventually concluded that this must
be because the physicians and medical
students
often handled cadavers for autopsy
purposes
prior to performing the births while the
midwives did not
he believed that something about
touching the dead bodies
and then performing these medical
procedures must have been causing the
mortalities
but this man was ridiculed and his ideas
about hand washing
were not widely adopted until after his
death
this man’s name was ignas semmelweis and
today we have what we call the
semmlewise reflex
which roughly states that we tend to
reject ideas that contradict established
beliefs
ignaz may have only had anecdotal
evidence to support
his claim but he had an idea
so what kept his idea from being more
readily explored
well for the sake of this discussion
could it be that the scientific
community
who opposed symowise’s idea viewed this
opportunity to be right
or wrong as a zero-sum game
in their mind did they stand only to
lose a point
for semmelweis’s gaining of a point
well if so then the scientific community
who opposed summerwise’s idea
failed to see the potential for a net
positive
non-zero sum outcome of them being wrong
think of this let’s say there are three
stages to being wrong
the first is where you are wrong but you
believe you are right
nature knows you’re wrong maybe some
others believe you are wrong but you
believe you are right you believe that
two
plus two equals three
the third stage is where you know you
were wrong
nature knows everybody knows now and you
have concluded through experimentation
that you were in fact wrong
you have added two beans to a bin of two
beans
and found that the new total quantity of
beans is four
well then the second stage is where the
danger lies
the second stage is where you are wrong
you still believe you are right and you
are acting on your wrong idea
you are accounting for transactions
under the assumption that two
plus two equals three
the second stage is where you can make
mistakes with grand repercussions
and the second stage is where you stay
so long as you believe
you are playing a zero-sum game and you
don’t want to lose
the scientific community who opposed
some wise
were stuck in the second stage of being
wrong
they were wrong but they believed they
were right
and they were acting on their wrong idea
they didn’t want to be wrong but the
fact of the matter is that if they had
moved on
to this third stage of being wrong lives
would have been saved
the best part about the third stage of
being wrong is that that’s when you have
the opportunity to be right
you get to move on from the wrong idea
that you had
and maybe you get to be right from now
on
the net positive non-zero sum nature of
this transaction means that
even though you were wrong you now have
a new piece of information
the incorrect answer and you’re making
progress towards more complete
and accurate knowledge
we don’t always have to be strictly
wrong in order to fall victim to this
mentality
we as humans struggle with a cognitive
bias where
we like our own ideas when somebody
presents a new idea that challenges or
contradicts something that we work to
create
sometimes we don’t want that idea to
work simply because it means that this
person has an opportunity to be right
about something
and that means that we’re wrong right
by denying the possibility that our idea
or method
should give way to something new we
think we’re winning a zero-sum
game but the reality is is that we’re
forcing everybody else to lose a
non-zero sum game
we’re actually creating a net negative
non-zero sum
you see the other person loses a point
because we say they’re wrong
but we don’t really gain a point because
nothing’s really changing
plus we’re denying the new wealth or
utility
that could have been created by a new
understanding
players only lost
if we can systematically recognize our
mistakes setbacks and wrong ideas to be
natural and meaningful occurrences along
a path toward greater understanding
then maybe we can react to these
episodes better emotionally
and mentally and we can not only handle
them emotionally and mentally better
but perhaps we can react with greater
self-awareness in the moment
we can identify that second stage of
being wrong
and we can recognize the potential for a
net positive
non-zero sum we can be
wrong and we can lose a point
knowing that new wealth or utility will
be created
by the new understanding maybe we won’t
love being wrong but if we can start to
see being wrong as something
other than losing maybe everyone can
start to win
a little bit more thank you
[Applause]
you