The good parts:

• Insightful book
• Loads of interesting and surprising supporting stories
• Extremely humbling

The bad parts:

• Way too long
• Gets a bit too academic at times
• Annoyingly long

The review:

“to be alive is to be wrong.”

It’s an expose into our expertness at committing errors of all kinds. The book starts with the extremely difficult task of trying to define what error really is. It then goes ahead to discuss topics like the several ways we commit errors, in its many different forms and across different spheres of life, our sometimes irrational and hilarious obsession with being right, the emotion of wrongness and our general response to it.

I found Being Wrong really calming and humbling. In some parts it felt like someone was telling me my life’s story or that of people I know. It’s not a recipe book that recommends how not to be wrong. Instead, it raises one’s awareness about several areas of life where one could do better by listening more, being more humble, forgiving and generally empathetic without directly saying you should. It also encourages us to be easy on ourselves and others in the face of error, for one major positive outcome of error is that it sets you on the path to being right.

Another part I really liked was how time and time again, it reiterates the idea that no concept is absolute. For example, relying on our communities for the truth could be good (we call it social proof) and bad (we call it group-think). Eye witness evidence is not always reliable, the golden rule is fallible in the sense that what’s best for you isn’t necessary good for others and so on and so forth.

Context matters!