Being Wrong

By Wayne Brown
Being Wrong, by Kathryn Shultz answers a were always afraid to ask::

  • Why do people have so many stupid ideas?
  • Why do I have so many ideas that turn out to be stupid?
  • Why will my wife NEVER admit she's wrong?
  • Why do people have so many fixed opinions about subjects they know nothing about?
  • Why are people so certain about what they remember, even when they completely mis-remember so many events in their lives?
This book is about being wrong. Why are we wrong so often? Why does being wrong feel exactly like being right? How can people be so spectacularly wrong (Greenspan comes to mind).

Shultz explores an impressive menagerie of wrongness, ways of being wrong, reactions to being wrong and ways to avoid admitting we are wrong. This is truly a much-needed reference book on one of the most basic and little appreciated of human experiences.

You NEED to read this book, because you yourself will be wrong almost immediately. You need to know how it happened and how to deal with it. Surely today, or perhaps tomorrow, you will run into someone who is incredibly wrong about something important to you. You need to understand how this happens.

Unless I'm wrong of course ...

Let me give you a sample ...

Let us suppose that you believe that Hell is real and the only way to escape it is to be "washed in the blood of the lamb" -- basically to swallow the American evangelical theology whole, start coming to church etc.

You believe you are right. You believe that your eternal salvation depends on you being right.

I think this is all hogwash and I'm quite sure I am right.

So the discussion begins ...

You present your "evidence", all the Biblical quotes, miracles, devils being cast out in your presence etc.

It all seems terribly biased and muddle headed to me. Of course u believe all that. You accept the whole package because that's what everybody next to you in Church believes. You would pay a terrible cost if you became a "heretic" -- you would lose your friends, possibly even your wife and family.

To YOU it seems that I'm the muddle-headed one, not paying attention to the evidence. To YOU it seems like I'm wedded to my sinful ways, possessed and blinded by the devil etc.

Both of us see the other as irrational and incapable of seeing the truth that is so obvious. Yet one of us is certainly completely wrong. The fact of human psychology is this: neither of us will even consider the possibility that WE are the ones who are wrong. WE are the ones who can't look at the evidence. WE are the ones with our thumbs on the scale.

It is always OTHER folks who lack evidence, fail to consider the evidence, are too stupid to see the obvious conclusion or who are just so corrupted by their evil personality that they WILL NOT see the truth. Logic and rationality will obviously never prevail. Perhaps the evil ones deserve to die.

Not us.

Oceans of blood have been spilled because of this simple fact of human nature. Think about it.

And read the book ...

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