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