When Your Wrong, Your Wrong

The only thing standing between you and
this shirt is $22.25.  Buy it at
http://www.zazzle.com/thebloggess. 

My son has recently started a Pre-K program that is taught largely in Spanish. As a result he's started trying to speak Spanish, which is a different thing all together from actually speaking Spanish.

Let me illustrate:

Sam:  Do you know what ice cream is in Spanish?

Cliff:  (Playing along.) What is it?

Sam: Icey creamy.

Cliff: I don't think that's actually the Spanish word for ice cream. I'm pretty sure helado is ice cream.

Sam: You're wrong.

Cliff: (Checking his iPhone to make sure he's right) No, Sam, it's helado.

Sam: Hmph.

Sam has also recently insisted that his eyes are lime green. And even in the face of considerable physical evidence, an iPhone translation app, or good common sense, Sam tends to double-down on his wrongness rather than hint at the possibility that he's not right.

Most of us are like Sam: we have a problem recognizing when we're wrong. Cliff has written about this before (see his entry, On Being Wrong), quoting "wrongoligist" Kathryn Schulz, who says that being wrong feels like being right: until you realize you're wrong.

I guess the real question is, how do you speed up the time it takes to realize you're wrong?

Cliff will be the first to tell you that I'm not an expert at admitting I'm wrong. (Though I'd also say that Sam got his stubborn wrongness traits from both his parents.) But here's one thing I know: feeling absolutely certain about something is usually a pretty good sign that you're wrong: 90% of college professors think they're above average.

My new wrongness goal is to catch myself when I feel certain about something and then to open the door, just a crack, to the possibility that I could be a teensy, eensy bit off base. My new wrongness goal for Sam  is to teach him never to do Spanish vocab battle with a guy armed with an iPhone.


(A comment on the t-shirt above, which I adore: it's taken from the commerce page of The Bloggess, a well known blogger and one of my favorites. Read her if you like funny stuff and you don't mind being offended regularly. But there are some of you, and you know who you are, who really should not click on that link. Don't blame me when you do.)