I stand corrected

It has been a long-time tenet of mine that we can only truly learn from being wrong. I do not mean to say that cannot learn at all from being right, it is just that we do not learn new things: by being right you either confirm something that you already knew all along or at best gain a bit of confidence in something that you suspected. Being openly wrong, on the contrary, will force you to face the fact that an idea you considered false is actually true, thereby expanding your wealth of knowledge.

Of course, this kind of exploration requires the right state of mind: it just does not work if, by whatever the reason, you are in need of confirmation rather than new knowledge. Admitting that you are wrong can be a hit to your ego, so much so that some people are never ready to take any risk and prefer to stay in their confirmation bubble all the time.

Photo: cogdogblog

A beautiful example of this readiness to be wrong and to learn comes form the long-time New York Times collaborator Nicholas Kristof, who once wrote on Facebook: 

Every time we go out for dinner they put out our order plus one additional dish that we have not tried before. If we like it, we can order it knowingly next time, if not we can still eat have a decent dinner with the other dishes that we already knew.

Admittedly, you have to be able to afford such an exploration, because in the end you might be paying for two and half dinners, but I find their readiness to learn commendable.

A similar attitude can be attributed to the very controversial SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who, in spite of his hubris and his flaunty nature, is right in stating that flying rockets into space is a risky business and, if you intend to be 100% sure before you give it a try, you are not only depriving yourself from a learning opportunity, but the cost is also likely to be immense. By being ready to assume a limited amount of risk the development can be much faster, and probably cheaper too.

I reflect upon this today because I have to admit that I have been wrong in a judgment I passed a few days ago. When I heard that the school was going to perform rapid tests to all the children in the first period of the day under the supervision of their respective teachers I applauded the measure: fifteen minutes of class twice a week was a very small sacrifice in exchange for having the schools open again. It turns out that the school district later decided that the tests will be performed at home before going to school, and this decision simply horrified me.

My first thought, I have to admit, is that the approach relied too much on the individual responsibility of the families. If the lock-down has not been enough to bring the pandemic under control is because some people are not following the rules closely enough, so why would it be any different with the self-administered tests? It is precisely the families with the highest risk of contracting COVID (manual workers, service people, etc.) those who can afford the least keeping their kids at home, even with a positive tests, so they have serious incentives to either falsely report that a test was performed or, even if it was, to report it as negative regardless of the actual result. I understand that someone might see this fear as bigoted or classist, but lacking further evidence I can only judge by two serious outbreaks that happened in the social housing projects in the early stages of the pandemic. And the social engagement after these many months is known to be lower, not higher.

Armed with this argument an my disappointment I discussed the decision with the mother of a friend of Trevor's and she pointed out that the decision had been influenced by the fear to the reaction that a positive test could elicit on both the tested kid and their mates. The former could suffer a panic attack or similar, and organizing the logistics of transporting a suspected patient would become a nightmare; the latter might shame or spurn the other kid, leading to a possibly long-lasting stigma that would be very negative for the kid and the whole class. In view of this argument I had no choice but to admit that the cost of having 5-10% of the rapid tests done inaccurately was probably an acceptable risk. Even if a positive child is consistently misreporting their results, they would eventually infect someone else in the class and the case could then be investigated. Of course, the number of infected patients by then could be 5 or 10 times higher, but one has to live with whatever is feasible and not keep longing for the ideal.

So, to be true to the spirit of honesty and humility that originally inspired this blog, I come to you to confess that I was probably too quick to judge and that the current solution is, in view of the circumstances, the best option, and I stand therefore corrected.

It is not that this is an infrequent case, because I make mistakes every day and I find no shame in embracing my human nature, but I think this story might resonate with some of you, so I decided to share it. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a nice evening.