Kathryn Schulz's book, "Being Wrong: Adventures on the Margin of Error" was revelatory for me. Rather than shunning error or trying to avoid it, I realized that acceptance of the inevitability of error was a kind of freedom. In "The Name of the Rose", William of Baskerville says that, instead of conceiving of one error, he imagines many, so that he becomes a slave to none.
I regularly tell my HS science students that science “fails forward” and that showing a hypothesis is demonstrably wrong is one of the most important things in science - so important that I wish there was a Nobel Prize every year for “best wrong hypothesis.”
One of my favorite things in life is being right (which I realize is grating) so whenever someone points out that I am wrong about something (with evidence) I thank them so I can try to be right the next time.
As I age, however, I keep finding out more and more things that I really THOUGHT were right for much of my life were, alas, not.
If one is not prepared for the inevitability of moving forward when a strongly held belief fails then it makes it REALLY hard to figure out anything about the universe or even about one’s own place in it.
Kathryn Schulz's book, "Being Wrong: Adventures on the Margin of Error" was revelatory for me. Rather than shunning error or trying to avoid it, I realized that acceptance of the inevitability of error was a kind of freedom. In "The Name of the Rose", William of Baskerville says that, instead of conceiving of one error, he imagines many, so that he becomes a slave to none.
Thanks for sharing! Hadn't heard about this person before.
Could it have been called a priori because in many of those instances, people seem to plot the curve first and then pick data to fit?
Yeah. The logical fallacy does seem like a good place to start because it is ultimately about rationalization of one’s already held beliefs.
I regularly tell my HS science students that science “fails forward” and that showing a hypothesis is demonstrably wrong is one of the most important things in science - so important that I wish there was a Nobel Prize every year for “best wrong hypothesis.”
One of my favorite things in life is being right (which I realize is grating) so whenever someone points out that I am wrong about something (with evidence) I thank them so I can try to be right the next time.
As I age, however, I keep finding out more and more things that I really THOUGHT were right for much of my life were, alas, not.
If one is not prepared for the inevitability of moving forward when a strongly held belief fails then it makes it REALLY hard to figure out anything about the universe or even about one’s own place in it.