Being Wrong

Adventures in the Margin of Error

De: Kathryn Schulz

Narrado por: Mia Barron

“Both wise and clever, full of fun and surprise about a topic so central to our lives that we almost never even think about it.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

In the tradition of The Wisdom of Crowds and Predictably Irrational comes Being Wrong, an illuminating exploration of what it means to be in error, and why homo sapiens tend to tacitly assume (or loudly insist) that they are right about most everything. Kathryn Schulz, editor of Grist magazine, argues that error is the fundamental human condition and should be celebrated as such. Guiding the reader through the history and psychology of error, from Socrates to Alan Greenspan, Being Wrong will change the way you perceive screw-ups, both of the mammoth and daily variety, forever.

Awesome

My mantra since reading Being Wrong is "I may be wrong about this". Schulz is helping me embrace my inner mistake maker. Who knew that I'd learn more and be more effective if I simply said "I was wrong" - without trying to come up with reasons or explanations. This is a book with good ideas and a wonderful writer. The writing may be more revelatory than the ideas (and the narration of the audiobook is simply divine), but the ideas are pretty good. Making mistakes defines our humanity, and a tolerance for mistakes (in ourselves and others) is synonymous with maturity.

Better than McRaney's You Are Not So Smart

This book focused on many of the heuristics detailed in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. Like David McRaney, in his book You Are Not So Smart, Schulz is a bit more relatable than Kahneman, which makes the study of heuristics (fallible thinking), easier to digest. Unlike McRaney, Schulz does a much better job of making arguments that do not fall prey to the very heuristics being argued against. She got tripped up a few times, in that her argument for one thing could just as easily have been used to argue for the opposite position. Despite her succumbing a few times to obvious heuristics, this book was considerably better quality than Raney's You Are Not So Smart.

One of my favorite things about it was her unapologetic argument for the value of heuristics. At the end of the day, Schulz views the brain as a probability machine. Instead of the brain being a stupid fallible organ, Schulz sees it as brilliant and right much of the time, and accepts that a percent of the time, it will get things wrong. The wrongness arises not from the fallibility of the brain, but from its absolutely brilliant strategy of calculating the probabilities. I fear I made this part of her argument sound slightly boring. It was not. This argument in particular was the highlight of the book. I probably would have given it 5 stars if not for the last chapter. I felt slightly annoyed, like it was a bit preachy. But, I am not certain if it really was. It might have been a bad fit for me, but could be a great way to end the book for other readers.

No matter how much I liked this book, no book on heuristics could be better than Tarvis' Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me. I looked up Tarvis and it appears that she might even be a self help type of writer. This is shocking to me because I loath self help books, unless they have actual studies to back up their claims and those studies have robust methods. For me, most self-help books are the new snake oil. But Tarvis' book was not simply one of the best books I have read on fallible thinking but one of the best books I have ever read period. Somehow she avoids, more so than Schulz and significantly more so than McRaney, tripping over the very fallibility she argues against. To me, that is quite impressive. So, Schulz's book was really good, but not up to par with Travis. If I were to rank books on decision making, the order would be as follows:

1. Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow (it is the seminal work and has myriad studies but a tiny bit dry at times)
2. Tarvis' Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me (the writing was fantastic and every page causes the self reflective reader a mini existential crisis)
3. Being Wrong by Schulz
4. I feel certain there are many books I have not read that are better than the next choice
N. McRaney's You Are Not So Smart.

If you are only going to read one book, make it Tarvis' Mistakes were Made. If you are willing to read more than one book (because, let's face it, your brains is super interesting and probably a bit narcissistic and would love it if you gave it multiple books to read about itself), then I highly recommend Schulz book as well.

EXCELLENT work!

If you've lived long enough, you know what it's like. Now learn more about why.

very well written and researched. life changing.

I loved this book! Absolutely life changing in the ways it helps you see yourself and others more compassionately. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve the culture of their workplace, family, or community!

Worth it.

A decent book to gain some interesting insights, but like all books of this nature it starts from a few premises that to my way of thinking are slightly to moderately false. Cleverly, from this books point of view, I suppose that really only proves that this book is on the right track.