On Being Wrong

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Here’s an imaginary situation. Suppose you are arguing with a person we’ll refer to as X. You and X are arguing about a media report. The report is so obviously misleading that you describe it as indistinguishable from a lie but X does not even agree that it is misleading.

A common enough situation, so suppose we focus on why X is so unwilling to identify the obvious lie. One simple explanation is that X is not so only unwilling, but also unable to identify the lie. Spotting media lies is an ability which X may not have sufficiently developed. Maybe X lacks a level of analytical ability analogous to the ability to solve crossword puzzles. Unwilling or unable? Unable is often simpler.

Usually we put this issue down to different attitudes or viewpoints, but it is worth exploring a simpler idea – X may be unable to do the skeptical analysis. This ability-based scenario seems arrogant of course, but it is simple and fits what we frequently have to deal with.

We navigate through life by avoiding surprises, which are anomalous situations requiring brain work to resolve them. It is more energy-efficient to avoid such situations so we evolved to do just that. Suppose we look at one common anomaly well worth avoiding – being wrong. Usually, being wrong about something is socially negative and best avoided, so we do avoid it.

We could push this along by crudely dividing the population into two general outlooks, the orthodox outlook and the skeptical outlook. We all possess both of course, but years of browsing the internet suggest to this observer that skeptical ability is far from being evenly distributed through the population. There are some incisively skeptical minds out there, but only other skeptics appear to be listening.

The orthodox tend to give their allegiance to power, majority, authority and virtue.

Skeptics tend to withhold their allegiance in favor of analytical skepticism.

Both of these general outlooks go some way to avoid being wrong and in that respect both are successful. Ironically, the orthodox have a greater likelihood of not being wrong than skeptics because they have the power to deny that wrong really is wrong. The power of perception does the rest.

Skeptics also have an effective avoidance strategy. They put a greater emphasis on the importance of uncertainty, on a wider range of possibilities, on avoiding the possibility of being wrong at some future point.

Inevitably, the orthodox always have too much power and too little skeptical ability. Psychological manipulators such as the Nudge Unit have an inbuilt tendency to downgrade this ability even further, and in so doing, make things even worse. It’s in the system.