Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2010

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-2

Part 2, Chapters 3-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-8

Part 3, Chapters 9-10

Part 3, Chapters 11-13

Part 4, Chapters 14-15

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 4, Chapters 14-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “Embracing Error”

Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Paradox of Error”

Chapter 14 begins with the story of an unnamed patient who went in for surgery at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in 2008. The hospital made the mistake of operating on the wrong side of the patient’s body. Such medical mistakes, says Schulz, once more raise the question of whether error is eradicable or inevitable. A paradox is found here, she explains, because trying to eradicate error relies on the assumption of its inevitability.

One illustration of systematic attempts to eliminate error is the corporate quality-control process called Six Sigma. The term stems from the Greek letter sigma (σ), which, in statistical analysis, represents the standard deviation from the norm. Any deviation, in the Six Sigma system, is undesirable, an error in manufacturing or in the end product. Companies that achieve Six Sigma have only 3.4 errors per million chances for error.

Such error-prevention strategies all begin with the acceptance that error will take place, so the possibility of mistakes is recognized, and techniques are in place to deal with their occurrence. Another element these strategies rely on is openness, such that errors are acknowledged in order to combat future mistakes. Finally, these strategies depend upon verifiable data rather than assumptions and opinions. These primary tenets of systematic protection against error differ from how humans tend to think, given “our often hasty and asymmetric treatment of evidence” (306).

As children, the author explains, we exist in a state of black and white thinking, a developmental stage psychologists refer to as “splitting.” However, around the age of five, we learn the word “maybe,” the advent of acknowledging uncertainty.

The author goes on to explain how our linguistic building blocks allow us to create verbal strategies that accommodate uncertainty and error. Disarming and self-deprecating statements—such as prefacing our assertions with the admission we may be wrong—demonstrate an awareness of one’s own trepidation and an acceptance of personal fallibility.

To prevent mistakes, Schulz recommends fostering an environment in which we can listen to one another and freely speak our minds, which, she admits, sounds like “a prescription for democracy” (311). Democratic governance, she explains, was developed by Enlightenment thinkers to deal with political fallibility. Tolerance for error can be seen in democracy insofar as our laws can be changed, but this tolerance is also evident in democracy’s inherent ideas: political parties and freedom of speech. Multiparty systems are fundamentally tolerant of error in that they require competing viewpoints, and open expression recognizes the potential to err through dissent. Here again lies a paradox: Safeguarding against error means embracing it.

To conclude, the author returns to the element of doubt as a means of challenging our beliefs. If we find ourselves unable to confront and embrace our own fallibility, we lose out on the kind of doubt that inspires imagination and curiosity in the face of complexity and contradiction.

Part 4, Chapter 15 Summary: “The Optimistic Meta-Induction from the History of Everything”

Chapter 15 begins with a discussion on the potentially comedic nature of error. Schulz states that for thousands of years, philosophers, writers, and critics have attempted to understand this relationship between error and humor.

The superiority theory of comedy, proposed by Thomas Hobbes, holds that errors cause us to laugh because they make others look ridiculous, making us look better in the process. This theory reaffirms our default assumptions, i.e., that we possess rightness, and others do not. Other thinkers have proposed that we laugh at errors out of self-recognition, that the errors show us the error within ourselves. This model Schulz deems the self-improvement theory of humor, whereby comedy is an imitation of our own common errors.

Meanwhile, the incongruity theory of humor holds that “comedy arises from a mismatch—specifically, a mismatch between expectation and reality” (323). Accordingly, comedic situations begin with a belief that is then violated, causing surprise, confusion, and even enjoyment and laughter. This experience also generates a replacement belief, meaning that the structure of humor is like the structure of error. Schulz’s point is that the expectation-reality gap is capable of producing the pleasure of comedy.

The author then turns to art, which, like error, diverges from strict reality. The philosophical objection that art is an inaccurate representation of reality dates to Plato. In The Republic, Plato argues that art misleads by presenting a false, inferior reality. The trouble with this viewpoint, Schulz argues, is that it subscribes to the pessimistic model of wrongness in its suggestion that imperfect representation—that is, error—should be eliminated. The optimistic model of wrongness, in contrast, shows “the potential beauty and power of individual, skewed, inaccurate representations of reality” (327-28). This model holds that artistic “misrepresentation” is a virtue rather than a defect.

Literary suspense, too, makes valuable use of error, whereby a strategic withholding of information misleads such that we are surprised and delighted by the ending. The act of losing oneself in a work of art is also a form of deception that results in pleasure. Raising yet another paradox, the author wonders over how isolation from the world by escaping into art actually frees us from isolation by allowing us to see both the world and ourselves from new angles. Art, like error, enables us to both lose and find ourselves.

Schulz also makes the point that mistakes are a key part of evolutionary theory. Errors in gene sequence replication result in variation within a species, which allows it to adapt and survive as a whole. Error is thus a mechanism, she claims, for survival and for change, and error is also essential to our intellectual, emotional, and social evolution.

The book concludes with a discussion on wrongness as optimism: the belief that we will succeed where we have failed. In the end, the author contends, all wrongness is optimism: We err because we believe in ourselves and our theories, despite how many times we have been proven wrong. Erring thus resembles hoping, as we face our wrongness with the faith that we have learned something and will get it right the next time.

Part 4, Chapters 14-15 Analysis

Focusing on the idea of embracing error, Chapters 14-15 are among the most philosophical in the book. Creating a kind of theoretical crescendo as she jumps from business to comedy to art to evolutionary theory, the author illustrates the fundamental inextricability of error from even the deepest aspects of human life.

Part of the philosophical tenor of these chapters comes from their focus on several paradoxes. Recalling the earlier question of whether error can and should be eliminated, the author raises the paradoxical point that eradicating error means assuming its inevitability. Business use of Six Sigma standards is an example, wherein companies assume that error will take place, and they create contingency procedures. Democratic governance is also a system designed around assumed fallibility; its principles—being able to change laws, the multiparty system, freedom of speech—acknowledge the inevitability of error. To safeguard against mistakes, we must paradoxically embrace our mistakes as unavoidable.

The optimistic model of wrongness, as it embraces error, extends far beyond business pragmatics. Chapter 15 engages literary and aesthetic debates. Schulz discusses the relationship between comedy and error, pointing to the incongruity theory of humor, in which comedy comes from a violation of our beliefs, causing surprise and delight and generating new beliefs. This structure of comedy resembles the structure of error, with new beliefs eventually coming to replace old ones. Comedic error creates pleasure. Likewise, the pleasure of literary suspense derives from finding out that our best guesses were wrong. Art embraces error in its celebration of divergence from reality, inspiring delight and provoking thought.

Finally, Schulz stands back to present an emphatic image of cosmic scale: Error is crucial to evolution, as gene replication allows a species to change and survive in its surroundings. Likewise, mistakes are imperative to our social, intellectual, and moral development.

Schulz concludes her work on a decisive note of hopefulness and even excitement; her main point is to view error as optimism, something that inspires delight and facilitates necessary change. Under the optimistic model of wrongness, we believe we will succeed where we have failed, despite knowing we will fail again. Failure is fundamental to growth.