Why Being Wrong Makes Humans So Smart

Hugh Pickens sends in an excerpt in last week's Boston Globe from Kathryn Schulz's book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. "The more scientists understand about cognitive functioning, the more it becomes clear that our capacity to make mistakes is utterly inextricable from what makes the human brain so swift, adaptable, and intelligent. Rather than treating errors like the bedbugs of the intellect — an appalling and embarrassing nuisance we try to pretend out of existence — we need to recognize that human fallibility is part and parcel of human brilliance. Neuroscientists increasingly think that inductive reasoning undergirds virtually all of human cognition. Humans use inductive reasoning to learn language, organize the world into meaningful categories, and grasp the relationship between cause and effect. Thanks to inductive reasoning, we are able to form nearly instantaneous beliefs and take action accordingly. However, Schulz writes, '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.' Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. '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.'"

Comments

Re:Rogue_rat

[billcopc]

Same kind of people who made up all the other english words. English has got to be one of the ugliest, most incoherent messes I've ever had the displeasure of speaking my entire life. It has to be the least expressive language I know of, lacking precision, so it should be no surprise that weird compound words bubble up to fill that void - mostly patterned after romance language constructs which allow for that kind of fine-tuning of almost any qualifier.

It's like PHP. We all know that linguistically it's a steaming pile of klingon shit, but it works and it's easy and every coder knows enough to get by. Sure, it's no Smalltalk and it sure as hell ain't LISP, but it gets shit done.