http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/06/13/the_bright_side_of_wrong?mode=PF What’s called for is a new way of thinking about wrongness, one that recognizes that our fallibility is part and parcel of our brilliance. If we can achieve that, we will be better able to avoid our costliest mistakes, own up to those we make, and reduce the conflict in our lives by dealing more openly and generously with both other people’s errors and our own...
Psychologists and neuroscientists increasingly think that inductive reasoning undergirds virtually all of human cognition — the decisions you make every day, as well as how you learned almost everything you know about the world. To take just the most sweeping examples, you used inductive reasoning to learn language, organize the world into meaningful categories, and grasp the relationship between cause and effect in the physical, biological, and psychological realms.
But this intelligence comes at a cost: Our entire cognitive operating system is fundamentally, unavoidably fallible. The distinctive thing about inductive reasoning is that it generates conclusions that aren’t necessarily true. They are, instead, probabilistically true — which means they are possibly false. Because we reason inductively, we will sometimes get things wrong... And here we arrive at the paradox of error: If we want to prevent it, we must understand that it is an inevitable part of us, an intrinsic side effect of a fundamentally sound system. Put differently, understanding the origins of our mistakes is the only way we can learn to deal with them, as both a practical and emotional matter... Recognizing that error is an inevitable part of our lives frees us from despising ourselves — and forbids us from looking down on others — for getting things wrong. Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy. We can respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity. We can demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. In short, a better relationship with wrongness can lead to better relationships in general — whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations.