Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

by Kathryn Schulz

Of all the strife in the world—strife of every imaginable variety, from conflict over crumb cake to conflict in the Middle East—a staggering amount of it arises from the clash of mutually incompatible, entirely unshakable feelings of rightness.

As soon as we know that we are wrong, we aren’t wrong anymore, since to recognize a belief as false is to stop believing it. Thus we can only say “I was wrong.” Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Error: we can be wrong, or we can know it, but we can’t do both at the same time.