Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

Alan Greenspan is the former chair of the Federal Reserve. The text mentions him for his connection to the 2008 financial crisis, before which he was lauded for his accomplishments as an economist and banker. However, after the economic collapse, Greenspan admitted that his model—one that had been the global model for the previous 20 years—had failed.

The author uses the circumstances surrounding Greenspan and the financial crisis to illustrate an ideological crisis that threatened someone’s long and deeply held beliefs. Schulz’s point is that when we are wrong, it is always fundamentally about our beliefs. It is the models made up of our beliefs that are tested and ultimately revised.

C. P. Ellis was the leader of the Durham branch of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1960s. He was eventually appointed as Exalted Cyclops of that branch, which was a position of great power. Ellis’s racism made his life feel simpler and easier: He scapegoated Black people as the explanation for his life’s difficulties, and the KKK provided him a sense of community. When the schools of North Carolina began desegregating during the 1970s, Ellis was appointed as a representative of the city’s poor, white, anti-integration citizens, which meant he had to participate in workshops with the city’s disenfranchised Black population.

Representing the impoverished Black population was Ann Atwater. What began as a tense disagreement between Ellis and Atwater eventually transformed into the two working closely together and even growing to care for one another. Before the workshops had ended, Ellis turned in his keys to the KKK chapter. The author uses Ellis’s transformation to illustrate how, much of the time, conversion in the face of wrongness involves a complete change in identity, with our sense of self challenged and transformed. Additionally, such conversion stories demonstrate that we are not always how we imagined ourselves to be.

Francis Bacon was a 16th-century philosopher, scientist, and statesman who argued that human error could partly be blamed on the influence of collective social forces. Bacon’s argument helps illustrate the author’s point that our societies deeply influence our beliefs, sometimes to our detriment.

The inclusion of Bacon’s viewpoint provides a foundation of philosophical thought for Schulz’s argument that we not only form our groups based on our beliefs but also form our beliefs based on our groups. This comes with inherent dangers, says Schulz, such as insular thinking and a lack of exposure to information that would challenge our beliefs.

Franz von Liszt was a University of Berlin criminology professor who is known for exploring the fallibility of witness testimony. He orchestrated an experiment in 1902, choreographing a situation in a classroom in which a student pulled a gun on another, and a shot was fired.

Although the scenario was staged, the surrounding students did not know this, and Liszt had them recall what had happened in individual accounts, asking them to give as much detail as possible. Liszt found that the best eyewitnesses got over 25% of the facts about the situation wrong, while the worst eyewitnesses were wrong 80% of the time. Schulz uses this experiment to illustrate the fallibility of the human memory, which often leads us to err.

The author refers to the character of Hamlet, from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, regarding what critics have historically considered one of his greatest flaws: doubtfulness. However, while indecisiveness has long been blamed for Hamlet’s internal conflict and the play’s unfolding tragedy, the author challenges this negative interpretation of the character’s deliberation.

Schulz argues that Hamlet has good reason to be doubtful, given that, first, he has no proof his uncle killed his father, and second, he has been directed to murder of his uncle by the ghost of his father. The author states that we should expect careful deliberation within such a situation but that we consider Hamlet’s doubt such a profound defect because we overvalue certainty. This stems from our aversion to uncertainty, which makes us feel unmoored and uncomfortable.

Hannah is a 46-year-old woman who, in 1992, underwent a neurological exam in Vienna, Austria. When asked by the doctor to describe various things in the exam room, Hannah answered with confidence, despite that everything she said was incorrect. Hannah has Anton’s Syndrome, which means that she is blind without knowing it.

The author uses the case of Hannah to demonstrate that wrongness has no limits. Any form of knowledge, says the author—not matter how convincing—can fail us. The author also uses Hannah’s circumstances to raise the topic of confabulation, which occurs when the brain makes something up without knowing it is doing so.

John Kerry is a US politician who served in the Senate and ran against George W. Bush in the 2004 election. Kerry was criticized during the election for his vacillation on issues ranging from the death penalty and welfare to social security and marriage equality.

Kerry presents an example where changing one’s mind while in a position of potential leadership—even if the deliberation is valid—is viewed as a sign of weakness. We tend to prefer confident leaders who mess up over deliberative leaders who make fewer mistakes. This, says the author, illustrates our discomfort with uncertainty.

John Locke was a British Enlightenment philosopher who lived from 1632-1704. Educated at the University of Oxford, Locke’s work is foundational to modern philosophical empiricism.

Locke’s thoughts on erring are part of the philosophical foundation of Being Wrong. Locke believed that error enters our lives due to the gap between the artifice of words and the reality those words represent—the distance between a thing’s essence and what is sayable about it. The author uses Locke’s idea to establish that error indeed arises from a gap: one between our mind and the rest of the world.

John Ross was a Scottish explorer and naval officer who, in 1818, was tasked by the British Admiralty with finding the Northwest Passage, a sought-after water route either across or around North America, by way of the Canadian Arctic. During his journey to Baffin Bay, Ross found that the only seemingly passable route was Lancaster Sound, but when we explored it, he found it was blocked by a mountain range and was thus impassable. Ross’s second in command, however, helped to determine that the mountains were, in fact, a mirage.

Ross’s story shows how our senses can fail us. His mirage helps illustrate the gap between us and the world—a gap that leaves room for error. Even the most convincing of perceptions, says the author, can lead us astray.

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher who lived from 1889-1976. He was educated at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger’s thought is foundational to the philosophical school of existentialism.

The author references Heidegger’s thoughts on error, which he viewed as resulting from humankind’s limitation by time and space. As we are bound to a particular time and place, he argued, we cannot transcend our position to see reality as it truly is. These thoughts support the author’s argument that human error springs from the gap between us and the fullness of reality and being.

Penny Beernsten is mentioned in the text due to her profound error of misidentifying her assailant on July 29, 1985. Penny attempted to memorize her assailant’s features and felt confident when choosing Steven Avery out of a lineup, and he was convicted. Penny later discovered through the Wisconsin Innocence Project, however, that Steven was not the one who assaulted her.

The author includes Penny’s story to illustrate what can happen when we are faced with being wrong. Upon learning that she had accused the wrong man, Penny instantly accepted her mistake and apologized to Steven. Schulz uses the story of Penny and Steven to explore the themes of denial and acceptance in the face of mistakes.

Plato was a philosopher of ancient Greece who lived from around 428-348 BCE. The text references Plato for his philosophical contribution to the idea of platonic love—the love of one mind for another. This kind of love, Plato thought, has the power to reclaim cosmic truths and restore us to completeness. The Western concept of love, Schulz explains, has changed little over the centuries, with us viewing it as the union of souls.

The author uses the concept of platonic love in her discussion on heartbreak. According to the author, the remedy for the distance between ourselves and others is love. When we are wrong about love, we are firstly wrong about a specific person but also about our notions about love itself; our idea that love is eternal and that this person cannot be wrong for us turn out to be incorrect, compounding our heartache. Being wrong about love, Schulz says, reminds us that we are all ultimately alone in the world.

Protagoras was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived from 490-420 BCE. He was the leader of a group known as the Sophists. Protagoras held to radical relativism, which espouses that the senses are the source of all knowledge and that there is no objective reality for the senses to misperceive. He believed that the information conveyed by the senses is reality, and if others’ perceptions contradict ours, then our realities must differ.

The author cites such radical relativism as foundational to philosophies of error, and she even credits Protagoras as the first Western philosopher to consider error, even if he only denies its existence. While the author does not agree with Protagoras’s position, she includes his perspective to contextualize the study of error.

Roger Bacon was an English philosopher and friar who lived from 1220-1292. He was a prominent proponent of experimental science during his time. Bacon’s Opus Majus covers a variety of topics ranging from theology and philosophy to linguistics and optics.

Schulz references Bacon’s belief that error arises partly from the influence of collective forces. The author includes Bacon’s perspective to help establish a philosophical foundation of thought regarding error, especially in regard to society’s influence on our beliefs.

Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century scholastic whose thought built upon Aristotelian premises on metaphysics. Aquinas is considered by the Roman Catholic Church as its most prominent and foundational theologian and philosopher.

Aquinas associated human error with original sin. Schulz presents Aquinas as a potential spokesperson for the pessimistic model of wrongness due to his position that error is both abhorrent and abnormal—a deviation from the divinely created natural order. Aquinas believed the mind to be truly reflective of reality, which goes against the author’s argument that error arises from the gap between our minds and the rest of the world.

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher and scientist who lived from 1588-1679. He is best known for his political philosophy work Leviathan. Hobbes proposed the superiority theory of comedy, which holds that error makes us laugh because it makes others look ridiculous and—by extension—makes us look better.

According to the author, this theory of comedy affirms our default position about rightness, i.e., that it is something we ourselves possess, while others do not. The author contrasts this theory of comedy with others, ultimately favoring the incongruity theory of comedy, which posits that comedy arises from a mismatch between our expectations and reality.

Thomas Kuhn was a historian and philosopher who lived from 1922-1996. He is best known for his 1962 work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s work asserts that scientific inquiry without a preexisting theory is impossible.

The author uses Kuhn’s argument as a foundation for the way our belief systems operate. According to the author, we need a conceptual framework—theories telling us what to ask and where to look. Much like Kuhn’s vision of the way science works, our beliefs hold until some crisis forces us to reconsider and replace them with new beliefs.

Thomas Nagel is a contemporary American philosopher best known for his essay titled “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The essay explores the question of consciousness, stating that there must be some internal experience of being a bat. Exactly what that experience is like, Nagel says, we will never know.

Nagel’s essay teaches us that it is likewise impossible to know the interior world of other people, and the more we differ from others, the more difficult we will find it to understand them. Nagel suggests that our failures to understand others’ internal realities do not make those realities any less real or valid. Schulz raises this point to emphasize the importance of not dismissing others simply because we have divergent viewpoints.

William James (1842-1920) was a 19th-century philosopher and psychologist. He was a leader of a philosophical movement known as pragmatism and a founder of the psychological movement of functionalism.

The author cites James as a potential spokesperson of the optimistic model of wrongness. James felt that the truth is not necessarily knowable or fixed and that the human mind is not directly reflective of reality; this approach makes error acceptable and explainable. The author uses James’s thoughts to lay a foundation for the optimistic model of wrongness.