Summary of Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Rightness is a second-order pleasure, meaning that it is not very enjoyable itself, but it is the basis for many other enjoyable experiences. It is essential for our survival, and it gives us a sense of being smart, competent, and in tune with our environment.

#2 We as a culture tend to view error as rare and bizarre. We regard it as a sign of intellectual inferiority, and we feel idiotic and ashamed when we are wrong. But error is a crucial part of how we learn and change.

#3 We live in a culture that despises error, but we don’t have any tools for dealing with it. We typically respond to mistakes by denying, defending, ignoring, downplaying, or blaming them on someone else.

#4 We have mastered two ways to handle our mistakes: we can add a small but strategic addendum to our mistakes, saying we were wrong but. . , and we can point out other people's mistakes. We love to revel in other people's mistakes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822528710

IRB Media

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Insights on Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Rightness is a second-order pleasure, meaning that it is not very enjoyable itself, but it is the basis for many other enjoyable experiences. It is essential for our survival, and it gives us a sense of being smart, competent, and in tune with our environment.

#2

We as a culture tend to view error as rare and bizarre. We regard it as a sign of intellectual inferiority, and we feel idiotic and ashamed when we are wrong. But error is a crucial part of how we learn and change.

#3

We live in a culture that despises error, but we don’t have any tools for dealing with it. We typically respond to mistakes by denying, defending, ignoring, downplaying, or blaming them on someone else.

#4

We have mastered two ways to handle our mistakes: we can add a small but strategic addendum to our mistakes, saying we were wrong but. . , and we can point out other people's mistakes. We love to revel in other people's mistakes.

#5

Our default attitude toward wrongness is to dislike it and seek to be right. This applies to relationships as well as our grasp of probability. We often believe that people who disagree with us are wrong, but we can never be proved wrong about those things.

#6

The field of human factors research studies error, and has for many years. It has subdivided and classified it into different categories, from stress to distraction to disorganization.

#7

Error-studies practitioners are a diverse group, ranging from psychologists and economists to engineers and business consultants. They seek to limit the likelihood and impact of future mistakes.

#8

We often use the word wrong to refer to both error and iniquity. We are more willing to accept the possibility that we are wrong about insignificant matters than about weighty ones. This has a certain emotional logic, but it is deeply lacking in garden-variety logic.

#9

The third reason morality will be discussed in this book is because many moral wrongs are supported and legitimized by factual errors. The relationship we develop with our errors affects how we think about and treat our fellow human beings, and how we think about and treat our fellow human beings is the alpha and omega of ethics.

#10

The traditional philosophical definition of wrongness assumes the existence of absolute rightness, and that we can be wrong about things. However, we often continue to act as if right and wrong are the relevant yardsticks.

#11

To better understand the experience of error, we must consider it from a different perspective. Instead of thinking of being wrong as believing something is true when it is objectively false, we could define it as the experience of rejecting as false a belief we once thought was true.

#12

There is no experience of