BEING WRONG

I recently heard a story about a man who had refused to get vaccinated against Covid for months. Then, of course, he contracted the disease. After a week in the hospital that put his future in doubt and racked up a $200,000 bill, his doctor asked him if he regretted not getting the vaccine.

You already know the man's answer, right?

Of course you do: he told his doctor, "No - it wasn't that bad."

When you hear this little tale, you might draw this moral from it: "Anti-vaxxers won't admit that they are wrong."

But if that is your takeaway, I want to suggest it is much too narrow.

Here's my takeaway: "PEOPLE won't admit that they are wrong."

"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."

- Kathryn Schulz in Being Wrong