Dare to be Stupid

Or: The Remarkable Power of Being Wrong

Of all the wisdom I have encountered in my life, few directives have struck me to be as simple and yet as powerful as Weird Al Yankovic's lyrical exhortation that we should dare to be stupid.

Given that the song of the same title is an homage to DEVO, I have to assume that Yankovic understood the importance of his suggestion (and may I humbly imply that if you don't believe DEVO's music is deep, you may be DEVO yourself) and that he meant for it to be a life lesson, not just a silly song title.

Not only is "Dare to be Stupid" a catchy name for a tune, but it also gets to the heart of something about strength, vulnerability, ego, and truth that has been on my mind quite a lot lately.

But Before We Get Started

It was pointed out to me a few days after I initially published this post that I really can't just throw this out and not tell a humiliating story about how it applies to me. So how about this:

There was a moment when I thought I had figured out an overlooked solution to the Monty Hall Problem... the question of, when faced with choosing one of three doors hiding a car and two goats, it is better to switch your choice after one goat has been revealed or stick with your initial choice. The only problem is that there was already a perfectly accurate solution, and it wasn't the one I thought it was.

I don't know what possessed me to think that I had stumbled upon something nobody else had ever thought of... I'd like to call it my own personal LLM-like hallucination... but it wasn't a hallucination. I studied the problem, thought it through, and decided I had it beat... then went out of my way to tell anyone who would listen, by writing and publishing three blog posts to explain my revelation in all of its gloriously incorrect detail. Not only did I write those posts but I edited, re-read, and reflected on them... and decided they were good. Then I added cute little AI generated images of doors and goats to help illustrate my mistake.

A few days later, a very smart and likely quite bemused colleague of mine pointed out why my "unique insight" into the problem was bunk. He then went on to explain very politely but firmly what is now obvious to me... the non-intuitive but mathematically provable answer that it's always advantageous to switch doors. What seemed obvious for a three door Monty Hall problem became absurd for a 30 or 300 door problem... and I had to admit that I was absolutely, stunningly wrong.

When you've done something dumb like this... and done it very much in public, the tendency is to want to cover it up, pretend it was a joke or, worse double down on it, dig your heels in and force people to either prove you wrong or give up trying to help you help yourself. Fortunately, despite the public postings... and subsequent retractions, I had stopped short of sending a letter to Marilyn vos Savant... which was the common response from people far smarter than me when she published the original solution over thirty years ago.

Let me tell you that even though it was embarrassing, it was best to just own up to it, make my retraction and thank my friend for the lesson. Strength, in this case trying to balderdash my way through an obvious error, would have been a weakness. Hanging my head, admitting I got it wrong and taking my lumps... what some may see as weakness... well that's where the learning happened. I had joined an esteemed group of people who thought they knew better but then had the rare opportunity to leave that group again without having to receive a hand-written rebuke from Savant herself... and I gladly took it.

Strength is a Weakness

"Strength is a weakness." This statement has gotten me a lot of strange looks over the years but I honestly believe it is true. The strength I'm referring to... the feeling one derives from their absolute certitude about their own skills, knowledge, intuition, experience, education and credentials... is not a strength at all, it's a curse. The sort of intellectual inflexibility which renders one incapable of accepting the possibility of being wrong is like a self-imposed prison which prevents them from being open to new ideas and perspectives, while at the same time alienating those people who would be most capable of revealing new things to them.

The true strength here... the tool to break the curse... is having the humility and fortitude to enter into every experience fully prepared to be utterly, unreservedly and very embarrassingly wrong. Don't mistake my intent here... I am not advising against confidence. I believe that the ability to take decisive action in a critical moment, even if that action is misguided, can be exceptionally powerful. What I am saying is that no matter how good your research, how broad your experience or how deep your internalized awareness of your chosen field of interest is, being ready to get schooled on it the hard way gives you not only the freedom to learn new things but also the power to be okay with being wrong when you are wrong without resistance and, most importantly, to not destroy trust in your intellect and judgement by being insufferable to everyone else before they can find out that perhaps you do turn out to be right most of the time.

We Don't Know What We Don't Know

This may not be a popular opinion but it's something I want to address briefly because I encounter it a lot... the appropriation of the concept of science to defend what is actually just motivated reasoning.

I once heard someone say "Science is not about identifying truth, it's about falsifying bullshit." No doubt it is a provocative statement, specifically crafted to produce an emotional response, but there's a core of an idea there. Phrased a bit more delicately, perhaps... one might say that science is not a destination, it's a process. It is provisional, falsifiable, and mechanism-focused, and it demands updating beliefs when evidence warrants. What I've experienced many people claim as science, on the other hand, are positions which the holder presents as unassailable truth... "obvious facts" which may appear to be grounded in research, examination and peer review but which can not actually be evidenced or reproduced... and particularly not questioned.

Inability or refusal to calmly and rationally examine one's "scientific" beliefs... as well as the use of science as a personal identity ("I'm science-minded"), a tribal badge ("We are the educated ones") or a rhetorical club ("The science is settled")... is not science. It is bad or incomplete data plus incentive plus ego dressed up in a lab coat.

Close Encounters of the Irrational Kind

But let's say you already knew that science is the process of examining what has not yet been proven wrong and trying like hell to do so... then how do you respond when you encounter people who think "science" is "what we know is right"? What do you do when you find yourself across a table from someone who insists on you accepting their version of truth without inspection or evidence, or who cuts you off mid-sentence to correct a statement you haven't made yet, or who, worst of all, stomps into your area of expertise with your book in their hand, seemingly intent on explaining your life's work to you which they only just discovered yesterday?

How, as they say, do you put up with it? Well here's some sage advice I saw in a movie once. That same movie had a guy boil some rice with his mind, though, so take it for what it's worth.

The 36 Stratagems

The Chinese have a saying... 三十六计，走为上策 which translates to "Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is the best." Some might argue that beating your opponent with a folding chair is better... every home has one, you can carry it openly and even the police can't charge you with it... but we're talking about staying out of trouble, not winning a gong fu fight in your kitchen. And so it is that typically, when faced with an individual who insists they are right and who refuses to consider the possibility that there may be evidence to the contrary, I usually just shrug my shoulders, give them the W and wander off while they're distracted with patting themselves on the back.

But avoidance is not the only strategy for dealing with the terminally correct. Here are a few alternatives you might try:

Socratic probing instead of direct contradiction

Rather than challenging the maker of assertions head on, instead ask questions that expose the method (or lack thereof) by which they derived their understanding.

"Walk me through the mechanism... how does X actually cause Y here?" "What evidence would change your mind on this?" "How was that conclusion tested against alternatives?" "What's the sample size / time frame / control group on that?"

Many "science-minded" people fold or deflect when forced to articulate their reasoning. If they engage honestly, great. And if you're right, even greater. And if it turns out THEY are right, that's the greatest yet. Congratulate yourself for daring to be stupid and buy them a drink out of gratitude. If, on the other hand, they get defensive and refuse to engage or demonstrate their reasoning, you've learned something valuable about them.

Shift from who's right or wrong to curiosity and joint exploration

Re-frame your disagreement with their assertion as an opportunity for mutual learning with an honest question like "I'm genuinely curious because my experience showed X... have you seen better studies or perhaps data collected on longer cycles?"

People will often insist they are right about something even when they know they are wrong due to ego or other status-related fears. Lowering the status threat may encourage them to inspect their own understanding more closely. Some people respond while others may reveal they're not actually interested in truth.

Make falsifiability explicit and low-stakes

I wouldn't advise you actually use the word "falsifiability" as a self-proclaimed "person of science" might mistake this word to mean "easy to fake" rather than "possible to be proven wrong". But for concrete claims that can be demonstrated easily, you might suggest something along the lines of "We can settle this in five minutes with a quick test... want to bet a coffee on it?"

For bigger topics that are a bit harder to prove or disprove with a quick Google search, you can ask "What's a prediction this model makes that we could check in the next 6 to 12 months?" People who treat science as religion often resist making specific, time-bound predictions... especially when there's the chance they may have to pay for your latte when their prediction doesn't work out.

Keep Your Exits Open

Despite your best efforts to be calm, rational and as open to being wrong as is reasonably possible when you know for a fact which way the wind is blowing, there will be some times when your irresistible force encounters an immovable object. In that case, try some of these techniques that are possibly less vulgar than audibly rolling your eyes or pulling out your phone camera and asking them repeat themselves for your Instagram audience.

If you find yourself in an intractable conversation with someone who just will not allow a ray of light to enter their hermetically sealed mind, you might suggest the following: "I find discussions more productive when we're both open to updating. If that's not the case, let's talk about something else."

Or if you're feeling particularly snide, you can try using the "steel man" technique... summarize their position better than they did, then explain where you diverge with evidence. This can appear to demonstrate good faith with the possibility of disarming resistance... if you have a good poker face. But it can set people off if they are particularly defensive.

And finally, it never hurts to time-box your conversation with something like "I'm sorry but I only have 5 minutes for this... let's focus on the objective for now."

The Strategic Withdrawal

If you can't simply walk away from a discussion without doing damage to the relationship, consider the fact that insisting on your being right (even and especially when you are) can be just as irritating to your less intellectually flexible companion as their insistence on their demonstrably false position is to you. In your own mind you can and should model the truth relentlessly, but some times it may be prudent to just keep it to yourself.

Publicly admitting that you could be wrong is powerful signaling. Over time, it attracts better conversational partners and repels the dogmatic ones. But with close friends or family, sometimes "shrug and let them win" preserves the relationship while you privately maintain your own model. The truth isn't always worth the social cost.

Be the Humility You Seek

The highest-leverage move you can make in the long-term is to get to know people before you get too deep into conversation with them and commit to spending more time with people who demonstrate the kind of intellectual humility that leads to growth and expanded awareness. We want to see those track records of them updating their mental models, successfully making specific predictions, and engaging in mechanism-focused thinking before we invest too much of our time, effort and energy in them, just as we expect they would with us.

But try not to take it too far... online forums, professional circles, and small truth-seeking groups can be interesting and engaging, but they can also become echo chambers that lead to the same kind of biases that we're trying to avoid. We're not just talking about other people here, remember, we're talking about ourselves too. Though we may not want to believe it, we are just as susceptible to bias as most anyone else and if we want to participate in meaningful dialogue with people who are prepared to listen and open to learning, we've got to be that kind of people ourselves first.

You Don't Have to be DEVO

The sad truth is that no matter what we say or do, some people will simply be unreachable on certain topics because being right serves deeper psychological or social needs for them (such as status, group belonging, coping, etc.) In those cases, avoidance or extreme superficiality may actually be the rational, if somewhat unpalatable choice. Unless lives are at stake, it may not really matter in the long run who was right or who was wrong... chances are if you can't see eye to eye with someone on something as easily determined as which way North is, you probably don't want to be going on any long, exploratory hikes with them anyway.

Jonathan Swift is credited with having opined that "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." If their worldview is formed by emotion and reinforced by fear, it's unlikely that anything you say, no matter how obviously true it may be to your eyes, will make any difference to them because they just lack the mechanism to look at it. And I know that's true because I read about it on the internet and I'm very smart and never wrong about these things.

Honestly I may be full of it, but this I can tell you from my own copious experience... pouring your energy into trying to transform people is not doing anyone any favors, especially not you. It's much easier and more fun to just say "You know, I'll defer to you on this one." and then simply vanish into the shrubbery while you try not to watch their cherished misconceptions crash into reality.

If you've made it this far without rage quitting, I appreciate you and would like to leave you with this one final thought. The phrase "I have no idea!" is not the end of intelligence, it is the beginning of it.