Comfortably Wrong

Thinking about CDAE and education at large I wanted to talk about an important misalignment of incentives in education that is perhaps having a serious dampening affect on creativity and innovation in society.  The problem is predicated on the simple fact that education selects for being Correct and one of the founding ingredients for creative thought and innovation is the willingness to be Wrong.

By passing our children through a system of education that determines success and failure based only on one’s ability to be Correct, we are extinguishing the creative cognitive patterns that produce new ideas by punishing Wrong.  Certainly we don’t want to start rewarding absolute wrong answers like 2+2=5, but what I mean to promote is that we try to remove the sense of absolute failure around being wrong by encouraging the idea that it is perfectly human to be incorrect and even that perhaps those who are willing to be wrong more often are more likely to stumble onto a fruitful idea they would have never let into the light.  I’m encouraged when Obama got up and was willing to be wrong when he admitted to screwing up on that Daschle fiasco.  That sets a precedent for us to embrace our wrongness, do what we can to limit it and move on.

The human ability to generate ideas is perhaps our most important universal ability and a system of education that selects for those who are able to most quickly mute their creative cognitive patterns is certainly doomed to the slow production of new ideas.  More than ever ideas are what we need right now.

As graduate students who have had at least some academic success in the past we have to be forewarned by this idea and try not to fear being incorrect.  We have been pre-selected by this very system for the ability to be repeatedly correct and possibly at the cost of limiting our willingness to be wrong.  With that in mind I encourage us all to be more comfortable with being wrong in the hope of being ultimately more right.

-Jeff

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized