Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
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Product Description
To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being incorrect is so natural, why are we all so terrible at imagining that our beliefs could be flawed, and why do we react to our errors with surprise, denial, defensiveness, and bring shame on?
In Being Incorrect, journalist Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so exasperating to be flawed, and how this attitude toward error corrodes relationships—whether between family tree members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations. Along the way, she takes us on a fascinating tour of human fallibility, from wrongful convictions to no-fault divorce; medical mistakes to misadventures at sea; failed prophecies to fake memories; “I told you so!” to “Mistakes were made.” Drawing on thinkers as varied as Augustine, Darwin, Freud, Gertrude Stein, Alan Greenspan, and Groucho Marx, she proposes a new way of looking at wrongness. In this view, error is both a agreed and a gift—one that can transform our worldviews, our relationships, and, most very much, ourselves.
In the end, Being Incorrect is not just an account of human error but a tribute to human creativity—the way we generate and revise our beliefs about ourselves and the world. At a moment when economic, political, and religious dogmatism increasingly apportion us, Schulz explores with uncommon humor and eloquence the seduction of certainty and the crises occasioned by error. A brilliant debut from a new voice in nonfiction, this book calls on us to question one of life’s most challenging questions: what if I’m incorrect?
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Wittiness aside, the act of writing a book about learning from error while building no mention of the works of Karl Popper is sheer cowardice. It is the same sort of cowardice that is at the root of most forms of dread of error: dread of rejection.
This book, then, is a magnificent example of closet Popperianism, and wittiness (charisma) is its mere complementary symptom, for all charisma is compensation of dread of rejection and lack of right courage.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I loved the thought of finding out why we as humans despise to be incorrect. I know intellectually that error are a process in learning and can lead to some pretty incredible discoveries. But no one wants to be incorrect. But, I thought that as appealing as it was – and it was. This would have been just as, if not more effective as a long essay and not neccisarily a book. I marvel if it ongoing out that way?
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
As a well loved investigation into wrongness (“wrongology”), this book holds promise. But, it doesn’t hold me. There is nothing compelling here, no tale that makes me WANT to read, nothing for me to learn. Just high gloss, euphemisms, passing reference to well loved culture. Huge words, small meaning … jumping all over the place with small to tie it all together additional than … wrongness.
I reflect Ms. Schulz should have taken a page from the playbook of Malcolm Gladwell. It is much better to report on social science, than try to be a social scientist. It is much better to untangle theory, than try to make theory. It is much better to define your topic up front and follow through, then pepper it through-out.
Tries to be more than it is and fails to deliver. Could have been one essay in the New Yorker … but a slapped together, wandering book? Nah.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Normally I delight in a excellent read on Psychology or Philosophy, or even more technical and theoretical studies or Economics or Physics, but this book suffers from the trap of many literary-minded writers…it completely loses you because there is too much beside the point and rambling information.
I was hoping for a concise, to the point, entertaining read such as the brilliant “The Art of Choosing”, and as a replacement for establish a book that started with philosophical opinion and long explanations of various modes of thought that had me frightened of what I was getting myself into.
Additional reviewers have done an brilliant job of describing what this book covers in detail so I won’t try to clarify it myself. I will simply say that if a name like me who reads Behavioral Psychology and Macroeconomics books for entertainment establish this book a hard and far from to-the-point read I would not recommend it to any casual reader, but only to a die-hard fan of philosophical/psychological opinion on the theme. Everyone else should check it out at the library to make sure they can handle the extremely dense and to some extent hard to decipher writing style of the leader. Written by an literary, NOT by a brilliant writer. The text of this book should have been chopped down by a quarter at least.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I loved this book.
I gave me a new view on the theme of being incorrect.
Most of us is ashamed of it. But the leader successfully showed me that mistakes are essential building blocks for wisdom. But more than that, this book really showed a new way of using errors to my advantage.
Recommended.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5