It’s ok to be wrong
A giant pet peeve of mine is people who argue on pure emotion. It’s not the emotion that bothers me, but the fact people get caught up in it. When that happens, a lot people will say anything to prove they are right. To them, being right is more important than being correct. I can understand that. Being right feels good. Being right is what a lot of people are paid to do. But it’s not the only thing.
Some people don’t just need to be right, they need others to be wrong.
When a person’s value doesn’t stem from their own deeds or ideas, there is a problem. When they knock other people down to build themselves up, that’s a problem. This can take many forms: making fun of disabled or overweight people, criticizing clothing choices, out of hand dismissal of other ideas, and more. But the one that causes me the most grief is the aforementioned powerful drive to be “right.”
What I see most wrong with it is that is devalues the idea of truth and facts. As I get older, I realize there are fewer truths in life. Quite the opposite, I see things that I always held close seem to fall apart. When I was a kid, the future was filled with flying cars, all jobs were fire fighters, police officers, doctors, lawyers and sports stars, and anyone in my class could do anything they wanted. A lot of those things fell apart, some quicker than others. Because of that, I feel we owe it to ourselves to find the truth whenever possible, to not accept anything less when it’s out there. That’s why I have a problem with this blinding drive to be right.
The idea of right is the one that doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The one that takes two people, ideas, or beliefs to exist. When that happens, we are more focused on the act of arguing itself, and turning it into a competition- the end goal isn’t ultimate discovery. The end goal is being right- no matter what it takes.
I suppose that is why anecdotal arguments are useless, a lot of the time. Nothing to prove, really- and how can you argue against them? Numbers, citations, expert opinion are valid, but “I heard…” isn’t really as effective. And that’s how experts become experts- they don’t simply parrot things they’ve heard (which is moderately better than making things up). Experts analyze and deduce, they formulate ideas and create thought experiments (or “real” ones) to test them and see if they are valid. But this rigor is not common to most people. In fact, quite the opposite, our culture of “you’re special” means we rarely tell our kids they are wrong. I know people who will not say “no” to their kids, I’ve read about people who sue McDonald’s because they make it hard to say no to their kids. If our kids don’t understand right and wrong, or that it’s OK to be wrong, then we’re creating more problems for them in the future.
Oh boy, I’m about to use an anecdote to further my point.
In high school, I had a few teachers who would ask questions and then call on students. This is standard. But when they gave answers, incredibly wrong ones at times, the teacher would give a tepid reaction. “Ehhhh, kind of.” This drove me nuts- most of the times these questions aren’t difficult- they didn’t require original thought, simply regurgitating information in the book or what’s written on the board.
To show a stark contrast, I had a math professor in college answer my question by proving, mathematically, that it made no sense. That was brutal. Of course no one in class laughed because they were all as lost as I was- the ones who would laugh didn’t came to that particular class because it was easy. Now this didn’t prove to me that being wrong was ok, but it was a lot better than my professor leading me to believe I was remotely close. I value his honesty in retrospect.
When I started to write this, I was confused and jaded by a type of person. I even went back, after the argument, and looked up the facts to prove them wrong- but that’s when I realized that proving that person wrong wouldn’t stop them from being who they are- it’s deeper than that. And it wouldn’t make me feel better either, in fact, I would probably feel worse by bringing it up to them. Now that I’ve written through my thoughts, I understand now that i’m not upset by this type of person. Sure, it’s irritating. But it’s more about something permeating our culture. Not academic rigor, but intellectual curiosity. Being wrong is OK as long as you learn from it.