On being wrong Kathryn Schulz

[Music]

[Applause]

so it’s 1995 I’m in college and a friend

and I go on a road trip from Providence

Rhode Island to Portland Oregon

you know we’re young and unemployed so

we do the whole thing on back roads

through state parks and national forests

basically the longest route we can

possibly take and somewhere in the

middle of South Dakota I turned to my

friend and I asked her a question that’s

been bothering me for 2,000 miles what’s

up with the Chinese character I keep

seeing by the side of the road my friend

looks at me

totally blankly actually a gentleman in

the front row who’s doing a perfect

imitation of her look and I’m like you

know all the signs we keep seeing with

the Chinese character on them she just

stares at me for a few moments and then

she cracks up because she figures out

what I’m talking about and what I’m

talking about is this

right the famous Chinese character for

picnic area I have spent the last five

years of my life thinking about

situations exactly like this why we

sometimes misunderstand the signs around

us and how we behave when that happens

and what all of this can tell us about

human nature in other words that you

heard Kris say I’ve spent the last five

years thinking about being wrong

this might strike you as a strange

career move but it actually is one great

advantage no job competition in fact

most of us do everything we can to avoid

thinking about being wrong or at least

to avoid thinking about the possibility

that we ourselves are wrong you know we

get it in the abstract we all know

everybody in this room makes mistakes

the human species in general is fallible

okay fine but when it comes down to me

right now to all the beliefs I hold here

in the present tense suddenly all of

this abstract appreciation of phal

ability goes out the window

and I can’t actually think of anything

I’m wrong about and the thing is you

know the present tense is where we live

we go to meetings in the present tense

we go on family vacations in the present

tense we go to the polls and vote in the

present tense so effectively we all wind

up kind of traveling through life sort

of trapped in this little bubble of

feeling very right about everything I

think this is a problem I think it’s a

problem for each of us as individuals in

our personal and professional lives and

I think it’s a problem for all of us

collectively as a culture so what I want

to do today is first of all talk about

why we get stuck inside this feeling of

being right and second why it’s such a

problem and finally I want to convince

you that it is possible to step outside

of that feeling and that if you can do

so it is the single greatest

moral intellectual and creative leap you

can make so why do we get stuck in this

feeling of being right one reason

actually has to do with the feeling of

being wrong so let me ask you guys

something

actually let me ask you guys something

cuz you’re right here how does it feel

emotionally how does it feel to be wrong

dreadful thumbs down embarrassing okay

wonderful great dreadful thumbs down

embarrassing

thank you these are great answers but

their answers to a different questions

you guys are answering the question how

does it feel to realize you’re wrong

realizing you’re wrong can feel like all

of that and a lot of other things right

I mean it can be devastating it can be

revelatory it can actually be quite

funny like my stupid Chinese character

mistake but just being wrong doesn’t

feel like anything I’ll give you an

analogy you remember that

Looney Tunes cartoon where there’s this

kind of pathetic coyote who’s always

chasing and never catching a roadrunner

in pretty much every episode of this

cartoon there’s a moment where the

coyote is chasing the roadrunner and the

roadrunner runs off the cliff which is

fine he’s a bird he can fly but the

thing is the coyote runs off the cliff

right after him and what’s funny at

least if you’re you know six years old

is that the coyote is totally fine too

he just keeps running right up into the

moment that he looks down and realizes

that he’s in midair that’s when he falls

when we’re wrong about something that

when we realize it but before that we’re

like that coyote after he’s gone off the

cliff and before he looks down you know

we’re already wrong we’re already in

trouble

but we feel like we’re on solid ground

so I should actually correct something I

said a moment ago it does feel like

something to be wrong it feels like

being right

so this is one reason a structural

reason why we get stuck inside this

feeling of rightness I call this error

blindness you know most of the time we

don’t have any kind of internal cue to

let us know that we’re wrong about

something until it’s too late

but there’s a second reason that we get

stuck inside this feeling as well and

this one is cultural think back for a

moment to elementary school you’re

sitting there in class and your teacher

is handing back quiz papers and one of

them looks like this this is not mine by

the way so there you are in grade school

and you know exactly what to think about

the kid who got this paper that’s the

dumb kid the troublemaker the one who

never does his homework so by the time

you are nine years old you’ve already

learned first of all the people who get

stuff wrong are lazy irresponsible

dimwits and second of all that the way

to succeed in life is to never make any

mistakes we learn these really bad

lessons really well and a lot of us and

I suspect especially a lot of us in this

room deal with them by just becoming

perfect little a student’s

perfectionists overachievers right mr.

CFO astrophysicist ultra marathoner

you’re all CFO astrophysicists

ultramarathon as it turns out okay so

that’s so fine right accept it then we

freaked out at the possibility that

we’ve gotten something wrong because

according to this getting something

wrong means there’s something wrong with

us so we just insist that we’re right

because it makes us feel smart and

responsible and virtuous and safe so let

me tell you a story a couple of years

ago a woman comes into Beth Israel

Deaconess Medical Center for surgery

Beth Israel’s in Boston it’s the

teaching hospital for Harvard one of the

best hospitals in the country so this

woman comes in and she’s taken into the

operating room she’s anesthetized the

surgeon does his thing stitches her back

up sends her out to the recovery room

everything seems to gone fine and she

wakes up and she looks down at herself

and she says why is the wrong side of my

body and bandages well the wrong side of

her body is and bandages because the

surgeon has performed a major operation

on her left leg instead of her right one

when the vice president for healthcare

quality at Beth Israel spoke about this

incident he said something very

interesting he said for whatever reason

the surgeon simply felt that he was on

the correct side of the patient the

point of this story is that trusting too

much in the feeling of being on the

correct side of anything can be very

dangerous

this internal sense of rightness that we

all experience so often is not a

reliable guide to what is actually going

on in the external world and what we act

like it is and we stop entertaining the

possibility that we could be wrong

well you know that’s when we wind up

doing things like dumping 200 million

gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico

or torpedoing the global economy so this

is a huge practical problem but it’s

also a huge social problem

think for a moment about what it means

to feel right it means that you think

that your beliefs just perfectly reflect

reality and when you feel that way

you’ve got a problem to solve which is

how are you going to explain all of

those people who disagree with you it

turns out most of us explain those

people the same way by resorting to a

series of unfortunate assumptions the

first thing we usually do when someone

disagrees with us is we just assume

they’re ignorant you know they don’t

they don’t have access to the same

information that we do and when we

generously share that information with

them they’re gonna see the light and

come on over to our team when that

doesn’t work when it turns out those

people have all the same facts that we

do and they still disagree with us let

me move on to a second assumption which

is that they’re idiots if all the right

pieces of the puzzle and they are too

moronic to put them together correctly

and when that doesn’t work when it turns

out that people who disagree with us

have all the same facts we do and are

actually pretty smart then we move on to

a third assumption

they know the truth and they are

deliberately distorting it for their own

malevolent purposes so this is a

catastrophe

this attachment to our own rightness

keeps us from preventing mistakes when

we absolutely need to and causes us to

treat each other terribly but you know

to be what’s most baffling and most

tragic about this is it this is the

whole point of being human you know it’s

like we want to imagine that our minds

are just these perfectly translucent

windows and we just kind of gaze out of

them and describe the world as it

unfolds and we want everybody else to

gaze out of the same window and see the

exact same thing that is not true and if

it were life would be incredibly boring

the miracle of your mind isn’t that you

can see the world as it is it’s that you

can see the world as it isn’t we can

remember the past and we can think about

the future and we can imagine what it’s

like to be some other person in some

other place and we all do this a little

differently which is why we can all look

up at the same night sky and see this

and also this and also this and yeah you

know it is also why we get things wrong

twelve hundred years before Descartes

said his famous thing about I think

therefore I am

this guy st. Augustine sat down and

wrote faller ergo soon I err therefore I

am Augustine understood that our

capacity to screw up is it’s not some

kind of you know embarrassing defects in

the human system something we can

eradicate or overcome

it’s totally fundamental to who we are

because unlike God we don’t really know

what’s going on out there

and unlike all of the other animals we

are obsessed with trying to figure it

out

to me this obsession is the source and

root of all of our productivity and

creativity you know last year

various reasons I found myself listening

to a lot of episodes of the public radio

show this American life I’m sure a lot

of you know it and so I’m listening and

I’m listening and at some point I start

feeling like all the stories are about

being wrong and my first thought was

I’ve lost it

you know I’ve become the crazy wrongness

lady I just imagine it everywhere which

has happened but but a couple of months

later I actually had a chance to

interview Ira Glass who’s the host of

the show and I mentioned this to him and

he was like no you know actually that’s

true in fact he says as a staff we joke

that every single episode of our show

has the same Krypto theme and the Krypto

theme is I thought this one thing was

gonna happen and something else happened

instead and the thing is says Ira Glass

we need this we need these moments of

surprise and reversal and wrongness to

make these stories work and for the rest

of us as audience members as listeners

as readers we eat this stuff up you know

we love things like plot twists and red

herrings and surprise endings when it

comes to our stories we love being wrong

but you know our stories are like this

because our lives are like this we think

this one thing is gonna happen and

something else happens instead George

Bush thought he was going to invade Iraq

find a bunch of weapons of mass

destruction liberate the people and

bring democracy to the Middle East and

something else happened instead and

Hosni Mubarak thought he was going to be

the dictator of Egypt for the rest of

his life until they got too old or too

sick and could pass the reins of power

on to his son and something else

happened instead and maybe you thought

you were going to grow up and marry your

high school sweetheart and move back to

your hometown and raise a bunch of kids

together and something else happened

instead and I have to tell you that I

thought I was writing an incredibly

nerdy book about a subject everybody

hates for an audience that would never

materialize

and something else happened instead I

mean this is life you know for good and

for ill we generate these incredible

stories about the world around us and

then the world turns around and

astonishes us I mean no offense but this

entire conference is an unbelievable

monument to our capacity to get stuff

wrong we just spent an entire week

talking about innovations and

advancements and improvements but you

know why we need all of those

innovations and advancements and

improvements because a half the stuff

that seemed most mind-boggling and world

altering it you know Ted 1998

didn’t really work out that way did it

no like where’s my jetpack trous so here

we are again and that’s how it goes we

come up with another idea we tell

another story we hold another conference

the theme of this one as you guys have

now heard seven million times is the

rediscovery of Wonder and to me if you

really want to rediscover Wonder you

need to step outside of that tiny

terrified space of rightness and look

around at each other and look out at the

vastness and complexity and mystery of

the universe and be able to say wow I

don’t know maybe I’m wrong thank you

thank you guys

you