Science Podcast Appearance Coming Soon

[Joshe]

On 2/17/2026 at 4:59 AM, Judy2 said:

yes.

i wonder how so many people (politicians, Leo, other public figures,...) are brave enough to publicly say anything at all then. how can you speak with confidence if you know that 20 years from now, you may disagree with what you said, at least partially? how do people write books and give advice or pretend to understand life when it's clear their views will keep changing?

I suppose it's possible the majority of people have not truly considered the implications. I'm always interested in the question: "What were you wrong about in the last few years that you felt certain about?". And if people don't have an answer, they're likely reinforcing their models, not updating them. 

But at the same time, confidently standing by what you believe to be true is good practice for the conscious person to gain wisdom. Proceeding with confidence is how we find out if our conclusions are wrong, and it's better than proceeding with doubt and reluctance.

You can't get the 30-year-old's hindsight without the 25-year-old's committed positions. Mistakes are the necessary infrastructure to wisdom.

Be wrong 10,000 times and actually register that you were wrong and eventually you will have been wrong so many times that the patterns of "how" you were wrong will become obvious. But this requires staking out positions and checking them for coherence. 

But some minds could care less to address incoherence while others feel compelled to. 

Most people don't care when they're wrong or when there's something in the system that doesn't fit - they just move on. But if they were to understand their error, they would increase in wisdom and understanding, which compounds over time. But I don't think everyone has sufficient drive or access to this. I don't think wisdom can proliferate because in order for that to happen, you need a specific type of psychic makeup that just isn't prevalent in the population. 

Wisdom is an emergent byproduct of contemplation and correction - two activities most people are not very interested in. Uncertainty feels bad. Being wrong feels bad. The human nervous system is optimized to avoid both, so it's optimized against the very process that produces wisdom.