This is the first of a series of micro-essays I developed from a talk I gave in 2018. The talk and essays explore foundational truths I’ve learned during the first half of my statistically-expected life.
You are wrong. Period. So am I.
Let’s start with some basics. First, our understanding and beliefs are derived from a network of mental models that we construct and maintain in our brain. Second, our mental model of the universe is based on what we perceive and then mentally process. But beware—humans have limited observational and cognitive capacity, which leads to some specific kinds of problems:
- spectral sensitivity (we can’t perceive the full range of phenomena; including time)
- resolution (we can’t observe the very tiny or the very large; and perceiving one often prevents seeing the other)
- scope (there’s just too much stuff to perceive and process)
These deficiencies render all our beliefs, truths, and hypotheses incomplete (at best) and sometimes (frequently) flat-out wrong. And even when our beliefs coincide with objective reality, it’s often nothing more than serendipity. Sometimes we do manage to put two and two together and formulate beliefs based on some observed reality, but our limitations prevent us from ever being completely “right.”
Everybody behaves rationally, considering the data they have access to, their cognitive capacity, mental biases, and priorities. But behaving rationally is different from being right. Being right equates to possessing an accurate and precise mental model of some slice of reality. In other words, knowing a truth enables you to make correct predictions within some scope.
Can you perfectly predict the future? The fact that you can’t means that you either suffer from an information deficiency or are clinging to a few misconceptions about reality (probably both). If you haven’t sincerely considered the possibility that you’re wrong, you can be sure that you are. Definitive positions on any topic (like the previous sentence) are always flawed—sometimes flat-out wrong and other times naively incomplete.
TAKEAWAY: The universe is probabilistic. Every belief you hold has some likelihood of being correct, and that likelihood is always less than 100%. Assuming that you’re right delays learning and, ironically, prolongs the time in which you’re wrong. Learning improves our mental models of the universe which, in turn, improves our predictive abilities. “Truth” is just an accurate predictive model within a particular domain.
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