Making It OK to Be Wrong

I have been afforded many privileges. Some are obvious. As a white male in America, I try to remember that many don’t have what I take for granted. Others are less obvious. As a tenured university professor, I am afforded intellectual freedom and professional security many can’t imagine.

One privilege is the benefit of working with young, intelligent people every day. It’s a hackneyed sentiment to say that I learn from my students more than they learn from me, but I try to live that truth. A recent experience has made me more aware of this privilege than ever.

Teaching Critical Thinking

I am an avid consumer of podcasts, which years ago introduced me to scientific skepticism. Programs like "The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe" were my entry into a movement of scientific inquiry, critical thinking, and consumer education. I proposed a course in critical thinking and skepticism, which I’ve been teaching for over a decade and now draws more than 200 students a year.

The course is built on the neurological, psychological, and cultural causes behind fallibility—basically, “Why do smart people often believe such strange (and wrong) things?”

On Being Wrong

People really don’t like to admit to being wrong. Some will risk calamity rather than acknowledge error, especially if their identity is built around whatever it is they are wrong about. Presented with evidence rebutting a belief, many will end up believing even more strongly. We had to invent the scientific method so people would have a safe environment in which they could be wrong.

I try to end the course on the same note. If there is one takeaway from the class, it is that it is OK to be wrong. Being wrong should be embraced. Error is the first step to knowledge. The class gets good reviews and high enrollment, but I wonder if it is changing any minds. Few take a class on skepticism who weren’t already skeptical. But I recently had an experience that validated the course’s approach and illustrated strategies to help people embrace fallibility.

Changing Minds

The course ends with an open-ended project. Students can submit anything, so long as it is educational, relevant to the course, and creative. I’ve gotten everything from conventional slideshows to original art, from one-act plays to rap songs. This past semester two students submitted video essays of how the course had affected their thinking. They could not have been more different. One, “Jane” (not her name), was a liberal woman of color. The other, “John” (same), was a conservative white male. And both eloquently said how the course led them to question core beliefs. Jane thought she had psychic powers and could read minds. But after the course, she realized that, while she was a keen observer, her “powers” were due to confirmation bias. John bought into several conspiracy theories. But he admitted that, despite our political disagreements, he realized he’d been bamboozled by propaganda.

Lessons Learned

Getting one such response would have been enlightening, but getting two, from different ends of the political spectrum, was revelatory. These responses suggest that the core goals of the course, to empower people to rationally question their own beliefs and those of others, are being fulfilled. Every educator has at some point thought, “Am I making a difference?” Those rare occasions where we see that we do are cherished. But more significantly, this allowed me to consider the question: What is it about the course’s approach that lets it be successful? A few possibilities:

• Possibility 1: Question the belief, not the believer. For every questionable belief in the class, whether it’s bigfoot or homeopathy, I emphasize that the believer is as much a victim as anyone else affected. It is vital that no one feel attacked lest they double down on a false belief. They have to understand that they are not their beliefs, and changing one’s mind doesn’t change who you are.
• Possibility 2: It’s nothing personal; it’s just evolution. Another theme is that the reason we believe wrong things is because we evolved to. We grew up as a species hundreds of thousands of years ago, in an environment that favored rapid and generally applicable answers to life-and-death questions. And what you believed was central to your membership in a group, membership that was also key to survival. But today groupthink is poison, and quick and simple answers are likely to be wrong, perhaps disastrously so. You’re not stupid for believing something wrong; you’re just following code that hasn’t been relevant for millennia.
• Possibility 3: Provide a better narrative. Facts are the building blocks of knowledge, but on their own, they aren’t very convincing. People think in stories, in narratives. A false belief, unsupported by fact but narratively compelling, will win out over an iron-clad but narratively sterile fact. You have to wrap these facts in their own narrative. For example, the government isn’t engaging in a campaign of disinformation to hobble industry with regulation, so much as those industries have worked to create this perception to gain a free hand in exploiting consumers.
• Possibility 4: What’s the harm? There is no such thing as a trivially wrong belief. Some are obviously dangerous, like believing vaccines are intentionally filled with toxins for nefarious but unspecified reasons. Others, like believing in ghosts, are perhaps less so. But even a seemingly innocuously wrong belief habituates the believer to accepting irrational concepts not rooted in evidence. And there are plenty of opportunistic people, some of whom are now elevated to lofty positions of power, seeking to take advantage of a population with atrophied or nonexistent critical thinking skills. Jane said it well in her essay, which closed with, “If I hadn’t taken this course, I would have continued to be ignorant. What else could I have fallen for?”

And you don’t have to be a professor or take a course to use these tools. Anyone can use these to change minds, one mind at a time.