Knowing Right from Wrong

My family is a perfect social experiment for this. None of them has ever felt wrong, while I’ve rarely felt confidently right. And our respective outcomes have diverged drastically, though we’re all working from the same genetic baseline.

Not at first, though. I started off more confident and more wrong, dutifully following my genome. But then, goddam it, I stumbled into doing something one must never do: I began to clock my wrongness. I noticed it everywhere. I was soaking in it.

Self-delusion requires fortitude I lack—so my way forward was obvious: diligently fill gaps, sharpen dull points, strip lazy bias, and extinguish brash know-it-all propensity—that last because someone requiring sustained and rigorous correction could hardly feel cocky. 

You can feel smart or you can be smart. One or the other. Smart-feelers are hilariously dumb (making them the perennial basis for comedy). Dumb-feelers are often right, but can't enjoy it because, alas, they know better.

So the question is: how badly do you want to be right? Do you want it badly enough to feel wrong? Like, forever? Will you pay that price?


Consider software testing. If you're certain that your app is indisputably perfect, contemptuously rejecting bug reports and complaints, imagine how your app will suck!

Everything starts out crude, but a properly diligent polishing stage—where all the good stuff happens!—is the exclusive domain of people capable of questioning their intrinsic majesty. Learning, growth, and change all require acknowledging that one is not a shining paragon of perfection. I realized only quite late in life how high a barrier of entry that is for practically everyone.