Latest / Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett / Be Wrong on Purpose

Transcript

Be Wrong on Purpose · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

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  [music]
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Today's experiment may be the most dangerous one yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not physically dangerous.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about something that is much more fragile.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our certainty.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because today,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to do something that most human beings are not especially famous
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  SPEAKER_00: for doing willingly.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to consider the possibility that you might be wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not suggesting that you intentionally say something false just for the experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: That would be an entirely different experiment and probably one that we should leave
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  SPEAKER_00: to the internet.
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  SPEAKER_00: What I mean is this.
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  SPEAKER_00: At some point today, you're going to disagree with somebody.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe about something important.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe About something incredibly stupid.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, before you start building your case, try something unusual.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, what if they know something that I don't?
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the experiment, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: Simple and surprisingly difficult.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because once we believe something, Our brains become remarkably good lawyers.
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  SPEAKER_00: We start gathering evidence for our side.
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  SPEAKER_00: We remember everything that supports us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We become strangely forgetful about the things that don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the goal quietly changes.
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  SPEAKER_00: We stop trying to understand what is true.
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  SPEAKER_00: We start Trying to win.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most of us have done this.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're halfway through an argument and suddenly realize you don't actually care
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  SPEAKER_00: about the original subject anymore.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, now you're defending your intelligence,
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  SPEAKER_00: your judgment, your entire ancestral bloodline maybe.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody could produce video evidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: Three witnesses and a notarized statement from Abraham Lincoln and part
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  SPEAKER_00: of your brain will still be saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: well, technically, that's when today's experiment gets interesting.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because there's a big difference between having a belief
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  SPEAKER_00: and becoming emotionally attached to being right about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: One allows us to think.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other can make thinking very difficult.
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  SPEAKER_00: So today, when you feel that little surge of, no, I know I'm right, don't immediately crush it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Notice it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then get curious.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe ask the other person, what makes you see it that way?
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  SPEAKER_00: And then,
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  SPEAKER_00: and this is the hard part,
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  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the answer without using the entire time to prepare your rebuttal,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is what we do, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: And doing it this way, it may feel unnatural.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've become very good at waiting for our turn to speak.
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  SPEAKER_00: Listening is something else.
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  SPEAKER_00: Listening means there's at least some possibility that what
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  SPEAKER_00: the other person says Might alter our understanding.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily reverse it, but just alter it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they know a detail that we don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they've lived through something that we've only thought about from a distance.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're still wrong, but for a better reason than we assumed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that matters too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Understanding someone's reasoning Doesn't require us to agree with it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It simply makes the disagreement more honest.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the internet has trained us in the opposite direction.
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  SPEAKER_00: Online certainty, online, certainty gets rewarded.
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  SPEAKER_00: Strong declarations, well, they travel.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nuance tends to arrive 20 minutes late, carrying a stack of footnotes.
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  SPEAKER_00: A person says, I'm not sure.
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  SPEAKER_00: And somebody else treats it like weakness.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I'm beginning to think that I'm not sure may be one of the strongest sentences that we have.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means that the door is still open.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means new information can get in.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's something freeing about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to know everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, nobody does.
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  SPEAKER_00: That should be obvious,
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  SPEAKER_00: but we often behave as though every conversation is an oral exam that we forgot
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  SPEAKER_00: to study for.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'd rather invent an answer than admit we don't have one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, try not doing that.
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  SPEAKER_00: See if you can spot it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That comes back to that self-awareness that you've got to be aware that you're doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: If somebody asks you something and you genuinely don't know, say, I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_00: See how it feels.
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  SPEAKER_00: You may discover that the earth continues rotating.
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  SPEAKER_00: People may even trust you more.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because once someone knows you're willing to admit when you don't know something,
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  SPEAKER_00: your confidence means more when you actually do.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's useful.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about becoming unsure of everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are things that we know.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are principles that are worth defending.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are moments when somebody really is mistaken and we have good evidence for saying so.
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  SPEAKER_00: Humility doesn't mean that you surrender your judgment.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means...
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  SPEAKER_00: It means leaving enough room for the possibility that your judgment can improve.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a very different thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think self-awareness plays a role here too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Remember what we talked about last week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Remember that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the thing that we're defending isn't really the idea.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's us.
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  SPEAKER_00: If someone questions our opinion, we hear things like, you're stupid.
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  SPEAKER_00: If they challenge a memory, we hear, you can't be trusted.
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  SPEAKER_00: If they disagree with something that we care deeply about,
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  SPEAKER_00: it can feel as though they are rejecting us personally.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once that happens, the conversation changes entirely.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now we're protecting ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: And defensive people don't usually become more curious.
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  SPEAKER_00: They become better armed.
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  SPEAKER_00: So today, today, if you feel yourself getting unusually heated, ask another question.
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  SPEAKER_00: What exactly am I defending right now?
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  SPEAKER_00: The idea or my identity?
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  SPEAKER_00: That one can sting a little.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it can also save us from some ridiculous arguments.
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  SPEAKER_00: I remember plenty of times when I'd been certain about something
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  SPEAKER_00: and later discovered I was wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not mildly wrong, not technically somebody else had a point wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wrong enough
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  SPEAKER_00: that the correct response was basically, well, Never mind.
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  SPEAKER_00: And strangely enough, I survived every time.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's worth remembering, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: Being wrong doesn't reduce us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Refusing to learn from being wrong probably does more damage.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's another reason that I wanted this experiment in the middle of the week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Monday was about noticing somebody.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday was about reaching toward somebody.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today is about making room for somebody else's perspective.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that may be one of the harder forms of connection.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to value another person while they agree with us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Disagreement is where we find out how much room that we actually give them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can they still be intelligent if they see something different?
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  SPEAKER_00: Can they still be decent?
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  SPEAKER_00: Can we disagree without shrinking them down into a label?
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean every opinion deserves equal weight, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't go there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some claims, some claims are poorly informed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some ideas cause real harm.
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  SPEAKER_00: We still have to use our judgment.
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  SPEAKER_00: But, but, Judgment works better when curiosity comes before contempt.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we understand why people believe something,
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  SPEAKER_00: we have a much better chance of responding wisely.
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  SPEAKER_00: And occasionally, brace yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Brace yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: They may even change our minds.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's allowed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Changing your mind after receiving better information is not hypocrisy.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called learning.
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  SPEAKER_00: I wish we treated it just like that way more often.
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  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if public conversations worked like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone says, I believed this before.
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  SPEAKER_00: I learned something new now.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now I see it differently.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead of attacking them for changing, we might say, good.
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  SPEAKER_00: That means your brain is still turned on.
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  SPEAKER_00: We could use more of that, couldn't we?
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  SPEAKER_00: Look at things today, man.
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  SPEAKER_00: So here's the experiment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Experiment number three.
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  SPEAKER_00: Be wrong on purpose.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not by pretending to believe something that you don't,
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  SPEAKER_00: but by deliberately creating enough space in one conversation for the possibility
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  SPEAKER_00: that you may not have the whole picture.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ask one sincere question.
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  SPEAKER_00: Listen longer than you normally would.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you don't know something, say so.
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  SPEAKER_00: Make a point to say so.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you discover that you actually were wrong,
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  SPEAKER_00: resist the urge to crawl under the nearest piece of furniture.
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  SPEAKER_00: Try this instead.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
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  SPEAKER_00: You were right.
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  SPEAKER_00: That may be the most advanced portion of the experiment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then pay attention to what happens.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the conversation softens.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the other person softens.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you do.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then again,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe nothing changes except that for one moment,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: you are more interested in understanding than winning.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow, guys, tomorrow we're going to remove something else from the equation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Credit.
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  SPEAKER_00: Experiment number four is simple.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do something kind and tell nobody.
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  SPEAKER_00: No post, no photo, no little hint later that you did something wonderful.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just kindness with nowhere to go except the person who receives it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love you guys very, very, very much.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I need you to do.
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  SPEAKER_02: Every story, every voice.
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  SPEAKER_02: In this love we
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  [music]