Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of ErrorTo err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. In Being Wrong, journalist Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken. Drawing on thinkers as varied as Augustine, Darwin, Freud, Gertrude Stein, Alan Greenspan, and Groucho Marx, she shows that error is both a given and a gift—one that can transform our worldviews, our relationships, and ourselves. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 25 | |
THE ORIGINS OF ERROR | 45 |
Our Senses | 47 |
Knowing Not Knowing and Making It Up | 67 |
Belief | 87 |
Evidence | 111 |
Our Society | 133 |
Being Wrong | 183 |
How Wrong? | 201 |
Denial and Acceptance | 220 |
Heartbreak | 247 |
Transformation | 273 |
The Paradox of Error | 299 |
The Optimistic MetaInduction from | 320 |
Acknowledgments | 341 |
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accept actually answer argued asked Avery beliefs better bias blind spot brain C. P. Ellis called certainty chapter claim cognitive comedy comes confabulation confirmation bias conviction defense denial Descartes doubt Ellis emotional evidence example existence experience explain face fact faith fallibility false feel friends Greenspan groupthink Hamlet happened Hirstein human idea illusions imagine inductive reasoning Innocence Project intellectual kind knowledge lives look matter means memory Miller Millerites mind mirages mistakes moral naïve realism nation Neufeld never ourselves patient Penny people's percent person Peter Neufeld Philip Tetlock philosopher political possible problem psychologist question quotation reality relationship Ross scientists sense Six Sigma someone sometimes Steven Avery story suggests talk theory there’s things thinkers Thomas Gilovich thought tion told truth trying turn understand University vote William Hirstein words wrong wrote