Kathryn Schulz's On Being Wrong

“On Being Wrong”
1. Summary: Kathryn Schulz studies why we misunderstand in general, our reactions to being wrong, and how these mishaps represent us as humans. She thinks the social construct of always being right is a problem. She goes on to explain that we developed this way because we are taught from a young age being wrong makes you realize you’re bad, and that we should strive to never make any mistakes. She says that believing in your feelings too much could be very dangerous. We react to being right by “resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions,” which is: thinking they are ignorant, than stupid and assuming they are evil. Schulz says this is the point of being human: getting over your assumptions, to accept you don’t know and might be wrong, and to learn.
2. Relating Information to Self: This information can be used by me as a reference to remember I am not always right. A barrier I might encounter to help self-improve is stubbornness because if I think I know the topic then I won’t stop until I am proved wrong. To overcome this, I could listen to the other person’s
Relating Information to Society: “On Being Wrong” could be used to improve society by making people less concerned about being right and more determined to solve the problem. Schulz said that as humans it is in our nature to be wrong. I believe if we could put the correctness aside, we could push the possibilities to actually make a change. An obstacle that society would have to overcome is the other part of human nature that makes us always believe we are correct. For example: Years ago, evolution was debated to be taught in school because a majority of society thought it challenged their religious affiliation; however, with more evidence helping to strengthen this theory, it is taught in school. As a society, we can overcome our natural tendencies to believe we are always right by thinking before we speak and actually doing a little research before we talk about a