More from Being Wrong
I'll have an actual review as soon as I finish, but in the meantime, here's another passage that I want to capture:
As I noted at the beginning of this book, we take rightness to be our steady state, while experiencing error as an isolated incident, no matter how many times it has happened to us. This might be a pragmatic choice--just a strategy for getting through the day with a minimum of hassle--but it is also emotionally alluring. Constantly reckoning with the possibility that we are wrong requires remaining aware of the chasm between us and the universe. It compels us to acknowledge that we can't know with certainty the truth about each other or the world, beyond the certainty that, in the deepest and most final sense, we are alone. That explains why we work so hard to dodge reminders of our fallibility, and why we weather so uneasily even our relatively trivial mistakes.
As I noted at the beginning of this book, we take rightness to be our steady state, while experiencing error as an isolated incident, no matter how many times it has happened to us. This might be a pragmatic choice--just a strategy for getting through the day with a minimum of hassle--but it is also emotionally alluring. Constantly reckoning with the possibility that we are wrong requires remaining aware of the chasm between us and the universe. It compels us to acknowledge that we can't know with certainty the truth about each other or the world, beyond the certainty that, in the deepest and most final sense, we are alone. That explains why we work so hard to dodge reminders of our fallibility, and why we weather so uneasily even our relatively trivial mistakes.