I bought this book because the writer had a good TED talk Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong. That's a risky move. A lot of these TED talkers turn out to be better with the speechifying than with the writing. But this is a great book.
It's a hard book to read: this book is about making mistakes. I don't want to think about that, do you? I hate being wrong. Just thinking about it makes me uncomfortable. Still, there's good stuff in here. I'll jot down some that I want to remember here.
"Augustine wrote 'fallor ergo sum': I err, therefore I am."
An interesting tidbit
The neuroscientist William Hirst (one of the co-chairs of the 9/11 Memory Consortium) explained that some memories might strike us as convincing not because they are necessarily accurate but because of how often we call them to mind (i.e., reassemble them) and how easy it is to do so.
Why wasn't the "new world" colonized/explored sooner? Partly because of mirages: the explorer John Ross thought that some mountains would block exploration: but those mountains were actually far away. But distortion in the air made them look close.
Anyhow, watch the talk if you haven't already and if you like it, check out the book: it lives up to the talk. Interesting stuff.
