Being Wrong Summary
Being Wrong
In the book Being Wrong by Karthryn Schultz, wrongness, or “err” as Schultz puts it, is explained and exposed as being a part of our everyday lives. There are many reasons for our wrongness which most people don’t recognize. These include trickery of the senses, Confabulation, or making thing up even if we don’t know we are, mistreating evidence, societal influence, prior beliefs, and the need to feel certain. These mistakes may seem detrimental to learning and understanding. However, being consciously aware of these mistakes can allow for major discovery, deeper understanding of the truth, and finally an overall method to advance human thought. I think that wrongness is vital to help us learn and change as long as we become aware of our mistakes to allow us to adapt and have the ability to make more logical choices based on truth. Senses can be the most deceiving misinterpretation of them all. The thought of the earth rotating around the sun while rotating on its own axis seemed preposterous during the 1400’s, but is common knowledge now. The senses lead you to believe the earth is the center of the universe but science proves this to be wrong. Without recognizing this flaw and learning from it, illusions and false interpretations would be accepted as truth. Schultz explains how illusions and mirages happen all the time and are not always small scale irrelevant occurrences. For example, as Schultz recalls, the voyage to find the Northern Passage in April of 1818 was a clear sensual misinterpretation that caused quite an uproar. The captain of the ship, John Ross, arrived at Lancaster only to be fooled into thinking a mountain range in the distance far beyond Lancaster blocked their way, while in reality the mountain range was nowhere near the inlet. The important part of this voyage was not the misinterpretation, but the questioning of the misinterpretation by Ross’s second in command. Another voyage followed and the sailors sailed right through the
In the book Being Wrong by Karthryn Schultz, wrongness, or “err” as Schultz puts it, is explained and exposed as being a part of our everyday lives. There are many reasons for our wrongness which most people don’t recognize. These include trickery of the senses, Confabulation, or making thing up even if we don’t know we are, mistreating evidence, societal influence, prior beliefs, and the need to feel certain. These mistakes may seem detrimental to learning and understanding. However, being consciously aware of these mistakes can allow for major discovery, deeper understanding of the truth, and finally an overall method to advance human thought. I think that wrongness is vital to help us learn and change as long as we become aware of our mistakes to allow us to adapt and have the ability to make more logical choices based on truth. Senses can be the most deceiving misinterpretation of them all. The thought of the earth rotating around the sun while rotating on its own axis seemed preposterous during the 1400’s, but is common knowledge now. The senses lead you to believe the earth is the center of the universe but science proves this to be wrong. Without recognizing this flaw and learning from it, illusions and false interpretations would be accepted as truth. Schultz explains how illusions and mirages happen all the time and are not always small scale irrelevant occurrences. For example, as Schultz recalls, the voyage to find the Northern Passage in April of 1818 was a clear sensual misinterpretation that caused quite an uproar. The captain of the ship, John Ross, arrived at Lancaster only to be fooled into thinking a mountain range in the distance far beyond Lancaster blocked their way, while in reality the mountain range was nowhere near the inlet. The important part of this voyage was not the misinterpretation, but the questioning of the misinterpretation by Ross’s second in command. Another voyage followed and the sailors sailed right through the