A post in French about “You always want to be right!” presents an interesting hypothesis: People who always want to actually be right like corrections a lot (because they make them righter). So they emit a lot of them; whenever someone makes a mistake, they offer a patch. But most people dislike corrections; when presented with one, they distort it instead of updating. So they end up with two mistakes instead of one. This leads the corrector to emit another correction, making things worse. Therefore, the interlocutor sees someone who constantly tells them they’re wrong, but is never right (because their words get distorted before reaching consciousness) - someone who refuses to lose debates (“who always want to be right”).
This is interesting. In particular, it explains why I often get called this by people who seem, both to me and to others, to “always want to be right” (make obvious mistakes, refuse to admit them). If it were just Dunning-Kruger (people who think “Oh, I’m so good at changing my mind in response to evidence!” being worse at it, and getting called out), we shouldn’t expect such a pattern.
Alternately, maybe they’re accusing us of being clever arguers.
This situation is common—Alice cares about being right, verifiably changes her mind unusually often, including saying “You’re right, I was wrong” during debates, likes to look at the evidence; Bob (according to several outsiders) often defends propositions like “The sky is green” in the face of contrary evidence, and gets angry when corrected; yet Bob accuses Alice of always wanting to be right.
It can’t just be about status. Bob would just call Alice a jerk or something. The hypothesis I linked is the best I’ve seen so far. What’s going on?
I think part of what is going on is that many forms of tribal allegiance are either defined by or illustrated by shared beliefs (e.g. our religion is right, our sports team is the best, our political stance is correct, etc.). So, repeatedly correcting someone has not just a simple status hit to it but an implicit attack on someone’s loyalty and an undermining of tribal allegiance. Note that this is to some extent simply a variation of the status hypothesis. Both the simple status hypothesis and this one predict that people will respond better to corrections if they are given in a less public situation which seems to be true.
I can’t present much in the way of evidence, but I think it is about status, and ‘you always want to be right’ is a more-specific way of calling someone a jerk.
It may be about status in a way that’s not immediately obvious, though—my model suggests that it’s less about who’s got higher status and more about something like equanimity, and that the question is whether or not Alice is trying to make a power grab; if not, the common wisdom is that she won’t consider it worthwhile to fight about something just for the sake of being right.
Actually on further reflection, this reminds me of a model I read about a while ago that suggests that uncertainty in relative status is important for group cohesion—that only the group alpha and the group omega can have approximately-known status, and between those two extremes someone making their relative status clear will be a destabilizing influence, for reasons that either weren’t presented well or I’ve forgotten. I’ll see if I can find that; it was a rather complicated model, of which this is just a small part, but it seemed potentially useful.
ETA: Found it. That’s actually the last post in the series, and it uses some specialized definitions for deliberately semi-offensive words, so it might be better to start at the beginning.
Agree it’s about status, disagree it’s only about status, or there’d be no reason for the way to be that specific.
Agree about egalitarian pressure.
It was Distracting wolves and real estate agents
. Do you mean that the correct response isn’t admitting the other person is right (what my mother advises), which loses the fight, but rather to drop the topic, making it unclear who won?
The first, second, and fourth of those are well served by noting the difference between being right and being known to be right, and not worrying about the latter in situations where the other person doesn’t value objective rightness. That basically describes my personal policy, anyway—I have a strong habit of going “oh, ok” and dropping the subject at the first sign of annoyance on the other person’s part in such cases, unless there’s something at stake beyond just their knowledge, and that seems to work well enough.
A post in French about “You always want to be right!” presents an interesting hypothesis: People who always want to actually be right like corrections a lot (because they make them righter). So they emit a lot of them; whenever someone makes a mistake, they offer a patch. But most people dislike corrections; when presented with one, they distort it instead of updating. So they end up with two mistakes instead of one. This leads the corrector to emit another correction, making things worse. Therefore, the interlocutor sees someone who constantly tells them they’re wrong, but is never right (because their words get distorted before reaching consciousness) - someone who refuses to lose debates (“who always want to be right”).
This is interesting. In particular, it explains why I often get called this by people who seem, both to me and to others, to “always want to be right” (make obvious mistakes, refuse to admit them). If it were just Dunning-Kruger (people who think “Oh, I’m so good at changing my mind in response to evidence!” being worse at it, and getting called out), we shouldn’t expect such a pattern.
Alternately, maybe they’re accusing us of being clever arguers.
This situation is common—Alice cares about being right, verifiably changes her mind unusually often, including saying “You’re right, I was wrong” during debates, likes to look at the evidence; Bob (according to several outsiders) often defends propositions like “The sky is green” in the face of contrary evidence, and gets angry when corrected; yet Bob accuses Alice of always wanting to be right.
It can’t just be about status. Bob would just call Alice a jerk or something. The hypothesis I linked is the best I’ve seen so far. What’s going on?
I think part of what is going on is that many forms of tribal allegiance are either defined by or illustrated by shared beliefs (e.g. our religion is right, our sports team is the best, our political stance is correct, etc.). So, repeatedly correcting someone has not just a simple status hit to it but an implicit attack on someone’s loyalty and an undermining of tribal allegiance. Note that this is to some extent simply a variation of the status hypothesis. Both the simple status hypothesis and this one predict that people will respond better to corrections if they are given in a less public situation which seems to be true.
I can’t present much in the way of evidence, but I think it is about status, and ‘you always want to be right’ is a more-specific way of calling someone a jerk.
It may be about status in a way that’s not immediately obvious, though—my model suggests that it’s less about who’s got higher status and more about something like equanimity, and that the question is whether or not Alice is trying to make a power grab; if not, the common wisdom is that she won’t consider it worthwhile to fight about something just for the sake of being right.
Actually on further reflection, this reminds me of a model I read about a while ago that suggests that uncertainty in relative status is important for group cohesion—that only the group alpha and the group omega can have approximately-known status, and between those two extremes someone making their relative status clear will be a destabilizing influence, for reasons that either weren’t presented well or I’ve forgotten. I’ll see if I can find that; it was a rather complicated model, of which this is just a small part, but it seemed potentially useful.
ETA: Found it. That’s actually the last post in the series, and it uses some specialized definitions for deliberately semi-offensive words, so it might be better to start at the beginning.
Agree it’s about status, disagree it’s only about status, or there’d be no reason for the way to be that specific.
Agree about egalitarian pressure.
It was Distracting wolves and real estate agents . Do you mean that the correct response isn’t admitting the other person is right (what my mother advises), which loses the fight, but rather to drop the topic, making it unclear who won?
Actually I was thinking of something else (I ETA’d my last post with links), but that’s an interestingly similar example.
As to what’s ‘correct’, it depends on one’s goals and preferences.
What do you mean, then?
It’s rather safe to assume that anyone interested in the questions has the following preferences:
Not being thought of as a jerk who always wants to be right;
Being as right as possible;
Helping others be as right as possible;
Enjoying socialization (of which the first item is a subgoal).
The first, second, and fourth of those are well served by noting the difference between being right and being known to be right, and not worrying about the latter in situations where the other person doesn’t value objective rightness. That basically describes my personal policy, anyway—I have a strong habit of going “oh, ok” and dropping the subject at the first sign of annoyance on the other person’s part in such cases, unless there’s something at stake beyond just their knowledge, and that seems to work well enough.