A well-known and oft quoted trope on the internet is Cunningham’s Law, attributed to Ward Cunningham. The law goes like this: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” This humorous anecdote likely rings true for many of us, because it is nearly impossible to take a position on any issue in a public forum without running into the inevitable know-it-alls which find it their mission to correct any mistruth (even if, ironically, they spew more of it) and showcase their intellectual prowess over us obviously inferior plebeians.
Not only is this behavior annoying, or even downright infuriating, but it is also remarkably tempting. All of us want to be right, it’s innate. We want the last word, the final say, the nail in the coffin. But that just can’t be true for all of us, all of the time.
In her excellent book “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error”, Kathryn Schulz puts it beautifully:
Like most pleasurable experiences, rightness is not ours to enjoy all the time. Sometimes we are the one who loses the bet (or the hotel). And sometimes, too, we are plagued by doubt about the correct answer or course of action — an anxiety that, itself, reflects the urgency of our desire to be right. Still, on the whole, our indiscriminate enjoyment of being right is matched by an almost equally indiscriminate feeling that we are right. Occasionally, this feeling spills into the foreground, as when we argue or evangelize, make predictions or place bets. Most often, though, it is just psychological backdrop. A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.
So what are we to do? If we can’t be right all the time, and we hate being wrong, what position are we to take? Well, I would hope that more of us could become more comfortable with being in the middle. That is, not knowing.
Not knowing something is almost as painful as being wrong. It’s humiliating to feel left out of a conversation because you have nothing to add. It’s embarrassing to be asked a question by a boss only to respond with “I’m not sure…” But becoming comfortable with saying “I don’t know” can open you up to tremendous learning opportunities you may have otherwise missed.
Admitting that you do not know something makes you vulnerable, and others will notice this. Instead of becoming defensive and using aggression or persuasion to convince you of what they know, they may be more open to sharing their thoughts in a respectful and polite way. Asking to learn instead of demanding to be right can de-escalate a tense exchange.
If you are a leader, admitting that you are unsure about how to accomplish a task and asking for help from a subordinate can not only improve your relationship, but show that you trust them in their own role.
The internet is a place ripe with people experiencing the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Basically, when we have elementary knowledge about a subject, we tend to feel confident in our abilities. However, as we learn and gain experience, we come to realize how little we really know. We have to put in effort and time to finally reach a point where we truly feel confident.
Most of us can’t call ourselves experts in many of the things we talk about. I’m certainly not an expert on this topic. But I do know that by trying harder to be honest with ourselves about what we do and do not know, and sharing that with others, we can open ourselves up to troves of knowledge we didn’t have access to before. And, hopefully, we can make the world a little kinder place.