The Goal Is To Be Less Wrong
What do you think you know that’s just not so?
You’re just a tiny drop in the ocean of a vast universe. What you have no clue about swallows what you know by a ratio of several quadrillions to one.
Being so ‘blinded’, it’s amazing how we sometimes expect to be right about everything.
Being right about everything should never be the goal. Some of your assumptions are wrong. Some of your beliefs are wrong. Some of what you’re “absolutely sure” of is dead wrong. Being always right is an unachievable state.
Here’s a rule of thumb: you’ll always be wrong about something. The world is too vast, complex, uncertain, complicated, and convoluted for you not to.
It’s a waste of time, then, to see being wrong as something to be afraid of. In fact, one secret to speed up your rate of learning — and increase what you’re right about — is to admit there’s a lot you’re wrong about, there’s a lot you don’t know, and then, consciously seek knowledge from that vantage point.
Tenelle Porter, a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at the University of California, describes intellectual humility as the ability to acknowledge that what we know is greatly limited.
