Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

by Kathryn Schulz

This is the lesson we learned with optical illusions, and it is the fundamental lesson of inductive reasoning as well: our mistakes are part and parcel of our brilliance, not the regrettable consequences of a separate and deplorable process. Our options in life are not careful logical reasoning, through which we get things right, versus shoddy inductive reasoning, through which we get things wrong. Our options are inductive reasoning, which probably gets things right, and inductive reasoning, which—because it probably gets things right—sometimes gets things wrong. In other words, and appropriately enough, Descartes was half right. Believing something on the basis of messy, sparse, limited information really is how we err. But it is also how we think. What makes us right is what makes us wrong.