We’re Wrong About Being Wrong.

March 18, 2014

In our endless quest to deliver new and trending topics, we sometimes come across timeless pieces worth consideration. Take Kathryn Schulz’s 2010 puzzling question: Why do we love being right? After all, she writes that unlike many of life’s other delights — chocolate, surfing, kissing — being right doesn’t feed into our biochemistry. We can’t enjoy kissing just anyone, but we can relish being right about almost anything. Schulz explores our strange relationship with being right in her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. To err is human. But if that is true, then why do we take erring so hard? Schulz examines the factors that lead us to err: senses deceive us, influence by irrational factors, trusting experts we like instead of those who tell the truth, etc. and she explores what it feels like to be wrong: embarrassed, defensive, heartbroken, mystified, angry. Finally, she reveals why being wrong should be embraced as an inevitable part of being human. Her March 2011 TED Talk received over 2 million views. 2 million people couldn’t be wrong–could they?

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