The joy of being wrong
Hope the weekend was kind to everyone. Without further ado, let’s get back into the joys of lateral thinking:
A man cannot sleep. He picks up the phone, calls someone and says:
“Hello, is this Mr. Johnson? Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery! I’ll call back soon with details on how to claim your prize.”
He hangs up and is finally able to go to sleep.
What happened?
As usual, a potential answer, at the end of this newsletter.
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I learned to love being wrong
We grow up learning how important it is to be right.
School is basically a memory game early on. Remember things correctly and you win.
The more we grow, the more free thinking and rationalizing comes into play. But even in those rare occasions when we’re allowed to think for ourselves, we try to stick with the popular opinion of our peers.
Moreover, being wrong feels bad. When you’re young and you’re caught on the bad side of an argument, even if you realize you’re wrong, you keep going and try to deflect, straw-man it or simply attack the other person personally.
Short mental detour: it’s vital to be able to identify a straw man argument fallacy. One example is on the Wikipedia page I linked above.
Person 1: We should relax the laws on beer.
Person 2: No, any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification.
We see this argument often on the internet, where it rarely matters who’s right, but instead the winner is the one who’s opinion was more popular and easier to share or engage with.
But you should care less about being right and more about learning new things.
The problem with being right is that it’s rarely beneficial for you.
If you’re right, nothing changes. If you’re wrong, you have the opportunity to learn something.
Even if you’re the smartest person in the room, having intelectual humility will create an opportunity for you to grow. The video below explains it well.
Answer: he called his next door neighbor who has snoring loudly. Now he’ll be able to sleep while the neighbor waits for the follow up call with jaded breath.