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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.'"
None of these conclusions make sense in an Eastern shame culture/honor culture. These conclusions, do, however, dovetail nicely with Western guilt culture. Correctly pointing out the mistakes of others can result in massive loss of face for the correctee. This will have real consequences for the finger-pointer. Publically admitting that you were wrong and redressing your errors is career suicide in many places throughout the world. I see it all the time, Westerners are shocked that their culture of "it's OK to make mistakes and it's a positive thing to admit when you are wrong" doesn't apply everywhere.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Look at what happens in Japan when a major mistake is make and in the west. Has anyone from BP taken accountability? Has anyone from Boeing ever laid down their jobs because they killed a couple of hundred people with their bad decision? Has any airline director every left? No.
But in Japan the higher ups DO feel that they are at fault for mistakes.
Your explenation of western attitude often becomes: A fault is nobodies fault.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter
the ability to reach a conclusion that could be incorrect... but is still probably correct.
That sounds a lot like fuzzy logic to me..
which is totally what she said
Man. That totally reminds me of how much I hate this one dude at work. He gets this stupid-ass grin on his face whenever he thinks he's telling you something you don't know, and it makes me want to knock the smug bastard's teeth out of his head.
At least he's a socially inept moron with a stupid-sounding voice, so the cosmic joke is on him.
I think the potential benefit isn't for those who are confidently intelligent. They see mistakes as a means of learning. The real benefit is for people who are tremendously insecure. They see mistakes and try to explain them away, or blame them on something else, negating the possible positive benefit of seeing why the mistake happened. For instance, they may have overlooked something. Instead of noticing that and learning to look for it the next time, they shy away from looking at the fault in detail.
I see this kind of thing all the time with my students. They misread something, and if I comment on it, no matter how nicely, the shut down because they don't like to be wrong because they think it makes them seem stupid. When in reality, they are trying to use inductive reasoning, which is a huge part of my goal. But...they miss the learning opportunity when they close down.
This article will make its way into my introductory lessons now. It will supplement the big sign on my door that says, "There is nothing wrong with being wrong."
An important change for education.
What annoys me is that managers expect perfection from imperfect being. I remember in my second year as an engineer I was testing an FPGA using a self-designed testbox. By a simply drawing a line in the wrong place I had connected 28 volts to 4 of the pins, which then blew-out the FPGA.
Rather than say "Ooops. Fix it and try again," the managers totally over-reacted and stopped work on the project. We wasted two weeks on this simple error. Thousands of dollars in man-hours because of a damaged $200 part. Rdiculous. I identified the problem within just a few hours and had it fixed by the next day, but the managers went into panic mode and forbade me from entering the lab until a 2 week review was finished.
They would not allow for error.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
David Hume pointed all of this out hundreds of years ago. And he backed up all his claims with plenty of evidence that was readily available at the time.
I wonder if Kathryn Schulz's is aware of this?
90% of income taxes are paid by the 1% richest earners. 99% are paid by the 10% richest. Yes I know - an inconvenient fact but also happens to be true (came direct from the IRS).
The simple truth is that they should pay much more. If you want to hold all the wealth, why shouldn't you pay all the taxes? The idea that a few can make almost all the money and yet accept less than their share of the stewardship (through various tax dodges including ye olde capital gains) is ridiculous no matter how you examine it. The top 10 taxpayers in the year 2000 paid taxes on only 50% of their income, another fact straight from the IRS. Typical wageearners who work for some corporation have to pay taxes on nearly 100% of their income. Now what's fair?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
DEDUCTION: Rule + Case -> Conclusion
Induction and Abduction use the elements in a different way:
INDUCTION: Case + Conclusion -> Rule
ABDUCTION: Conclusion + Rule -> Case
Only deduction provides a valid inference. But humans default to using abduction and learn induction and deduction only slowly through formal training.
You told me, but you didn't convince me.
Actually, had they told anybody, the job would stop. Every employee has the authority to stop a job - any job. There aren't some jobs that some people can stop and some jobs that other people can stop, anybody can stop a job for safety on a BP rig (or any BP facility). That gets pounded into your head day from day 1 - if you see something that you think is unsafe, you stop it, and everybody gets together and double-checks the plan and makes sure they haven't missed anything that would make it unsafe.
There are practical limits, of course. For example, if I'm not involved in a job and I have no idea if it's safe or not because I'm not qualified enough to know the difference, then I have no business stopping a job. I still have the authority to stop it, but I won't stop a job because I have no idea what's involved. However if I'm involved in a job and I feel unsafe, I will absolutely stop the job.
By the same token, management may be pushing to get a job done a certain way (they always want to use the low cost option), but if they aren't qualified to know what is safe and what isn't they obviously aren't going to stop the job for safety. However, if you are qualified to know if it's safe, and you think it is not safe, you MUST stop the job. If you're working on a job and you feel unsafe, you MUST stop the job.
All it took was for one person to say "This doesn't seem safe, we need to stop the job" and the job would have stopped right then and there. The fact that it didn't means either nobody said to stop the job, or there was a serious breach of BP policy.
In other words, all of this "If they had just listened to the engineers" stuff is either complete bullshit (as in, never happened), or criminal mis-management at the rig level. This is not the kind of decision that happens further up the chain. There is a very real possibility that there was a local culture to ignore safety concerns in spite of BP policy, in which case the ones responsible actually are the people on the rig. Not Tony Hayward, not the President of BP Americas, but the rig management and possibly one level above them (if only for putting such people in a position of authority).
I do think there is a real problem with BP's management culture which makes accidents more likely. They have a tendancy to move managers around from position to position, and they tend to stay at one place for no more than two years. The idea is to get a "broad understanding" of oil field operations as well as the corporate side. This means if they are ever going to get a top-level manager, they can't keep them in one place for very long. This leads to serious inconsistencies in management of a particular facility/rig. They also tie bonuses directly to how much of your budget was left over each year. This creates a perfect storm for accidents due to poor maintenance, as the easiest place to cut is the maintenance budget (safety & compliance and production always gets funded). I believe this is why BP has the worst record for environmental accidents in the industry by a huge margin. How that directly relates to this spill is going to be subtle, though. I would definitely name it as a contributing factor.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller