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