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Being Wrong

Adventures in the Margin of Error
Nov 18, 2013
This book is about why we make mistakes, how we feel about being wrong, and how we do (or don't) learn from our errors. Counter-intuitively, the author says that being wrong is good. Her book is not a guide to how to avoid error, nor is it a self-help manual, although in the course of reading it you will reap much wisdom for general living. It's more of an extended meditation on why error is the natural human state and how that's not necessarily a bad thing. The author, a journalist, is a breathtakingly good writer. She is a consummate story-teller and mines her material from many diverse veins: interviews with interesting people, fascinating research in philosophy, psychology, and political science, and a rich store of examples from literature and popular culture. At least one review I read compared her with Malcolm Gladwell. Personally, I like her writing better. Her clever use of arresting case studies, sparkling wit, and lightly-worn erudition kept me turning the pages eagerly, but I never had the sense that she was cherry-picking, distorting, or oversimplifying academic findings to improve her story. You may be wondering what errors she is talking about. The answer is just about everything: errors about the physical world, about most fields of human thought, about the big religious and ethical issues, and about what is going on in the minds of other people - and in our own. Her inquiry ranges from trivial errors like losing the car keys, to huge ones like the existence (or not) of weapons of mass destruction in another country. This book is well worth reading from cover to cover. But if you have only limited time, skim Part I, her two introductory chapters, and then read chapters 12 ("Heartbreak") and 13 ("Transformation"). They stand on their own as bravura pieces of writing. "Heartbreak" deals with wrongness in the area of love: the emotional bomb-shell of a failed intimate relationship. "Transformation" explores how we can be so wrong in the realm of self-knowledge (examples range from buyer's remorse to conversion experiences). After that, I'll bet you'll be sold on reading the rest and sharing its ideas with friends!