There is so much I love about this, and I am very glad Kathryn Schulz is getting so much attention for her new book on how we need to change the way we think about being wrong. I grew up in a household where, let’s say, my recurring wrongness about a great many things was kept at the forefront of my attention. And I grew up Roman Catholic, where the presumption of our sinful nature is a cornerstone of the entire program. And I grew up to become an editor, a field in which it’s a given that creating a “perfect” text is an impossibility, and in which everything we editors (and our ilk) do to text is designed intentionally as a hedge against the inevitability of error. So this resonates with me in a very big way. To err is to be human, right? But it’s all in what you make of it. To learn from your mistakes; to heed the cautionary tale–these are supposedly articles of how we educate and improve ourselves. Too many of us resist the idea that being wrong–regularly, naturally–is a basic part of our fallen condition. Hey–nobody’s perfect. Start there, and then see how far you can get.
