Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz. Errors are ridiculed, looked down on, branded misanthropic and on and on ad infinitum in our culture. Our mistakes makes life more pleasurable. Our imperfections are the roots of all wisdom. We are not demi-gods, to err is part of being human. This is the message Schulz's wonderful book. This is not a self help guide on how to avoid mistakes but enlightens on how to "assimilate" us with our errors (which is already part of who we are).
"We love to know things, but ultimately we can't know for sure that we know then; we are bad at recognizing when we don't know something; and we are very, very, good at making stuff up."
"Although we are highly adept at making models of the world, we are distinctly less adept at realizing that we have made them!!"
"Of somethings we feel that we are certain: we know, and we know that we do know. There is something that gives a click inside of us, a bell that strikes twelve, when the hands of our mental clock have swept the dial and meet over the meridian hour." William James didn't mean the above lines as a compliment. The feeling of knowing something is incredibly convincing and inordinately satisfying, but it is not a very good way to gauge the accuracy of our knowledge.
On confirmation bias and herd mentality... so much for that wisdom of crowds.
"Whether we spend so much time with these people because we agree with them, or agree with them because we spend so much time with them, the crucial point remains the same. We do not just hold a belief; we hold a membership in a community of believers."
Beautiful lines on what art teaches us about being wrong
"If art arises from our fundamental isolation in our own minds—from the way we are denied direct access to the world and all its contents—it also temporarily frees us from that isolation. Art lets us live, for a little while, in other worlds, including in other people’s inner worlds; we can hear their thoughts, feel their emotions, even believe their beliefs. (Odd, how able and happy we are to do this with fiction, when we often have so much difficulty doing so in real life.) Put differently, art is an exercise in empathy. Through it, we give the constraints of subjectivity the slip; we achieve, however temporarily, that universal moral aim of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes."
One of the best relationship advice I have ever read ironically (and aptly) comes from this book titled Being Wrong...
“People have to learn to listen and listen and listen and listen until they finally get it that their partner has their own inner world—that you like apples and your partner likes oranges and that it’s okay to like oranges. One of my
axioms is that if you want to be in a relationship, you have to get it that you live with another person. That person isn’t you. She’s not merged with you. She’s not your picture of who she is. She doesn’t live inside your mind. She doesn’t know what you’re thinking, and you don’t know what she’s thinking. So you have to back off and move from reactivity to curiosity. You have to ask questions. You have to listen.”
"We love to know things, but ultimately we can't know for sure that we know then; we are bad at recognizing when we don't know something; and we are very, very, good at making stuff up."
"Although we are highly adept at making models of the world, we are distinctly less adept at realizing that we have made them!!"
"Of somethings we feel that we are certain: we know, and we know that we do know. There is something that gives a click inside of us, a bell that strikes twelve, when the hands of our mental clock have swept the dial and meet over the meridian hour." William James didn't mean the above lines as a compliment. The feeling of knowing something is incredibly convincing and inordinately satisfying, but it is not a very good way to gauge the accuracy of our knowledge.
On confirmation bias and herd mentality... so much for that wisdom of crowds.
"Whether we spend so much time with these people because we agree with them, or agree with them because we spend so much time with them, the crucial point remains the same. We do not just hold a belief; we hold a membership in a community of believers."
Beautiful lines on what art teaches us about being wrong
"If art arises from our fundamental isolation in our own minds—from the way we are denied direct access to the world and all its contents—it also temporarily frees us from that isolation. Art lets us live, for a little while, in other worlds, including in other people’s inner worlds; we can hear their thoughts, feel their emotions, even believe their beliefs. (Odd, how able and happy we are to do this with fiction, when we often have so much difficulty doing so in real life.) Put differently, art is an exercise in empathy. Through it, we give the constraints of subjectivity the slip; we achieve, however temporarily, that universal moral aim of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes."
One of the best relationship advice I have ever read ironically (and aptly) comes from this book titled Being Wrong...
“People have to learn to listen and listen and listen and listen until they finally get it that their partner has their own inner world—that you like apples and your partner likes oranges and that it’s okay to like oranges. One of my
axioms is that if you want to be in a relationship, you have to get it that you live with another person. That person isn’t you. She’s not merged with you. She’s not your picture of who she is. She doesn’t live inside your mind. She doesn’t know what you’re thinking, and you don’t know what she’s thinking. So you have to back off and move from reactivity to curiosity. You have to ask questions. You have to listen.”
No comments:
Post a Comment