Think Again

MISTAKES WERE MADE . . . MOST LIKELY BY ME
As prescient as Jean-Pierre’s bet on Trump was, he still had trouble sticking
to it in the face of his feelings. In the spring of 2016, he identified the media
coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails as a red flag, and kept predicting a
Trump victory for two months more. By the summer, though, as he
contemplated the impending possibility of a Trump presidency, he found
himself struggling to sleep at night. He changed his forecast to Clinton.
Looking back, Jean-Pierre isn’t defensive about his decision. He freely
admits that despite being an experienced forecaster, he made the rookie
mistake of falling victim to desirability bias, allowing his preference to
cloud his judgment. He focused on the forces that would enable him to
predict a Clinton win because he desperately wanted a Trump loss. “That
was just a way of me trying to deal with this unpleasant forecast I had
issued,” he says. Then he does something unexpected: he laughs at himself.
If we’re insecure, we make fun of others. If we’re comfortable being
wrong, we’re not afraid to poke fun at ourselves. Laughing at ourselves
reminds us that although we might take our decisions seriously, we don’t
have to take ourselves too seriously. Research suggests that the more
frequently we make fun of ourselves, the happier we tend to be.
*
 Instead of

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beating ourselves up about our mistakes, we can turn some of our past
misconceptions into sources of present amusement.
Being wrong won’t always be joyful. The path to embracing mistakes
is full of painful moments, and we handle those moments better when we
remember they’re essential for progress. But if we can’t learn to find
occasional glee in discovering we were wrong, it will be awfully hard to get
anything right.
I’ve noticed a paradox in great scientists and superforecasters: the
reason they’re so comfortable being wrong is that they’re terrified of being
wrong. What sets them apart is the time horizon. They’re determined to
reach the correct answer in the long run, and they know that means they
have to be open to stumbling, backtracking, and rerouting in the short run.
They shun rose-colored glasses in favor of a sturdy mirror. The fear of
missing the mark next year is a powerful motivator to get a crystal-clear
view of last year’s mistakes. “People who are right a lot listen a lot, and
they change their mind a lot,” Jeff Bezos says. “If you don’t change your
mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot.”
Jean-Pierre Beugoms has a favorite trick for catching himself when
he’s wrong. When he makes a forecast, he also makes a list of the
conditions in which it should hold true—as well as the conditions under
which he would change his mind. He explains that this keeps him honest,
preventing him from getting attached to a bad prediction.
What forecasters do in tournaments is good practice in life. When you
form an opinion, ask yourself what would have to happen to prove it false.
Then keep track of your views so you can see when you were right, when
you were wrong, and how your thinking has evolved. “I started out just
wanting to prove myself,” Jean-Pierre says. “Now I want to improve myself
—to see how good I can get.”
It’s one thing to admit to ourselves that we’ve been wrong. It’s another
thing to confess that to other people. Even if we manage to overthrow our
inner dictator, we run the risk of facing outer ridicule. In some cases we fear
that if others find out we were wrong, it could destroy our reputations. How
do people who accept being wrong cope with that?
In the early 1990s, the British physicist Andrew Lyne published a
major discovery in the world’s most prestigious science journal. He
presented the first evidence that a planet could orbit a neutron star—a star
that had exploded into a supernova. Several months later, while preparing to

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give a presentation at an astronomy conference, he noticed that he hadn’t
adjusted for the fact that the Earth moves in an elliptical orbit, not a circular
one. He was embarrassingly, horribly wrong. The planet he had discovered
didn’t exist.
In front of hundreds of colleagues, Andrew walked onto the ballroom
stage and admitted his mistake. When he finished his confession, the room
exploded in a standing ovation. One astrophysicist called it “the most
honorable thing I’ve ever seen.”
Andrew Lyne is not alone. Psychologists find that admitting we were
wrong doesn’t make us look less competent. It’s a display of honesty and a
willingness to learn. Although scientists believe it will damage their
reputation to admit that their studies failed to replicate, the reverse is true:
they’re judged more favorably if they acknowledge the new data rather than
deny them. After all, it doesn’t matter “whose fault it is that something is
broken if it’s your responsibility to fix it,” actor Will Smith has said.
“Taking responsibility is taking your power back.”

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When we find out we might be wrong, a standard defense is “I’m
entitled to my opinion.” I’d like to modify that: yes, we’re entitled to hold
opinions inside our own heads. If we choose to express them out loud,
though, I think it’s our responsibility to ground them in logic and facts,
share our reasoning with others, and change our minds when better
evidence emerges.
This philosophy takes us back to the Harvard students who had their
worldviews attacked in that unethical study by Henry Murray. If I had to
guess, I’d say the students who enjoyed the experience had a mindset
similar to that of great scientists and superforecasters. They saw challenges
to their opinions as an exciting opportunity to develop and evolve their
thinking. The students who found it stressful didn’t know how to detach.
Their opinions were their identities. An assault on their worldviews was a
threat to their very sense of self. Their inner dictator rushed in to protect
them.
Take it from the student with the code name Lawful. He felt he had
been damaged emotionally by the study. “Our adversary in the debate
subjected us to various insults,” Lawful reflected four decades later. “It was
a highly unpleasant experience.”
Today, Lawful has a different code name, one that’s familiar to most
Americans. He’s known as the Unabomber.
Ted Kaczynski became a math professor turned anarchist and domestic
terrorist. He mailed bombs that killed three people and injured twenty-three
more. An eighteen-year-long FBI investigation culminated in his arrest after
The New York Times and The Washington Post published his manifesto and
his brother recognized his writing. He is now serving life in prison without
parole.
The excerpt I quoted earlier was from Kaczynski’s manifesto. If you
read the entire document, you’re unlikely to be unsettled by the content or
the structure. What’s disturbing is the level of conviction. Kaczynski
displays little consideration of alternative views, barely a hint that he might
be wrong. Consider just the opening:
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a
disaster for the human race. . . . They have destabilized society,
have made life unfulfilling. . . . The continued development of
technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject

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human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on
the natural world. . . . If the system survives, the consequences
will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the
system. . . .
Kaczynski’s case leaves many questions about his mental health
unanswered. Still, I can’t help but wonder: If he had learned to question his
opinions, would he still have been able to justify resorting to violence? If he
had developed the capacity to discover that he was wrong, would he still
have ended up doing something so wrong?
Every time we encounter new information, we have a choice. We can
attach our opinions to our identities and stand our ground in the
stubbornness of preaching and prosecuting. Or we can operate more like
scientists, defining ourselves as people committed to the pursuit of truth—
even if it means proving our own views wrong.

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A