BEING RIGHT AND BEING WRONG

Here's another truth I picked up this past year like a stray dog that unexpectedly followed me home one evening and now has become loved and cherished even though she is often annoying and demanding of attention. (Yes, I am thinking of Ginger. God love her.)

Here it is in a nutshell from Scott Adams: "No matter which side is right on any given topic, the one thing we know for sure is that being right and being wrong feel exactly the same to all of us. We can't tell the difference. If we could, everyone would agree on everything important." 

Let that really sink in: Being flat-out mistaken about some aspect of reality and hitting the bullseye in the exact center FEEL the same to me and to you. 

In a way this is common sense (easiest to see in someone who is not us), but the ramifications of this idea are both deep and wide and they take some time to absorb. So, at the risk of getting too repetitive, here's the same idea in the words of  journalist Kathryn Schulz in her book Being Wrong: "It does feel like something to be wrong. It feels like being right." 

This realization has both shaken my confidence in my own perceptions AND has made me more sympathetic to all the people around me who are constantly getting things wrong. ;-)

Which can be a little unsettling, because for 50 years I've been right about everything, and now? 

I wonder. 

Here's Schulz again: "A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient." 

We think and act as if we ourselves are omniscient. This is one more ugly result of humanity's Fall - one more way we attempt to place ourselves on God's throne. 

At least, that's what it looks like to me.

I could be wrong.