On being wrong

[dr_tectonic]

nehrlich has a very nice post about taking responsibility.

Coincidentally, one of the things my grandmother and I talked about this evening is how remarkable it is that people are so resistant to saying "I'm sorry", "I was wrong", or "I don't know", when they're such tremendously liberating things to say.

When I was taking my comps (quals? I can't remember) in grad school, and I had to do oral exams, my advisor told me that I got HUGE points from my thesis committee for being willing to say so when I didn't know the answer to a question. Of course, I'd say "I don't know, but let's see... I know X, and from that we can get Y. And considering Z, it's probably... Q?" so I was still working my way toward an answer, but apparently lots of people try to snow their committee. Which is just silly, if you think about it.

And I still remember this time when I was sitting in the front row in a lecture my first year at MIT and not following the professor at all. And eventually I got over my embarassment and asked him if he could explain it again, and when he did, there was this huge audible sigh of relief from the entire room, and I realized that nobody had been following, but everyone was too afraid to say "I don't understand" to get a better explanation.

And then one night when I was back in grad school, living in the little studio off of Baseline, the apartment below me had a loud party on a night when I was having trouble sleeping. So I stomped down there all cranky and tried to bawl them out while a drunk girl pushed me out of the doorway I was trying to shove my way through. Which didn't accomplish much except to make me feel really ashamed the next morning, so I eventually nerved myself up and went downstairs and said "Listen, I want to apologize because I was really out of line last night, and I did want to ask you to be quiet, but I went about it all wrong and I'm sorry". And the really cool thing was is that not only did I feel a lot better, the guys whose apartment it was immediately started saying "no, no, it was all our fault, we should apologize to you", and it all worked out.

And I won't get into any details, but lemme tell ya, "I'm sorry, I was wrong, you were right" is an absolutely essential thing to be able to say for healthy relationship maintenance.

Why do people have such a hard time with it, I wonder? It get easier with practice, but at this point, it's so easy that I can't really remember why they ever seemed like hard things to say...

Comments

[zalena.livejournal.com]

You're right. I think these are particularly potent things to demonstrate in front of children, who are always asking fabulous questions. "What an excellent question! I don't know. Let's find out!"

The reverse is also true: people who apologize for everything, even when they don't need to. Do you think gender plays an element in the willingness to apologize (or over apologize?)

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I think gender is relevant, but so is culture. There is a reason why the plural noun for Canadians, accd'g to the CBC, is "an apology of Canadians". It has taken me seveal years to get used to the idea that one starts many conversations here with "I'm sorry", not "Excuse me".

Incidentally, one way to make people feel guilty (and thus shut up) about having a loud party does involve a bit of duplicity. You get up, put on your pajamas and your bathrobe and slippers, go to wherever the noisy people are, and say, with sleep on your face, "I was asleep, and you woke me up." If you manage to be completely loopy at them, even drunk folks will feel guilty and maybe get quiet.

[We learned this when we lived over a bar. Shouting, "Shut the hell up!" has no effect whatsoever.]

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the passive-aggressive apology. A classic.

Why is that that groups of things are always described as "a verb of nouns?"

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

No, it's not really that, either.

It's just the way people start conversations. I mean, much as Austrian people don't really mean "God is great!" when they say "Gross Gott!" as a way of greeting, Canadians are only sort-of apologizing when they say "I'm sorry." But it's not really passive-agressive.

It's all complicated.

[dpolicar]

(nod) Exactly. It's a hedge-phrase intended to lower barrier to entry.

But as with any colloquialism, those whose culture doesn't include it will tend to hear it literally.

This is particularly bad for idiosyncratic colloquialisms.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Well, it's sort of like "excuse me", right?

I open with "I'm sorry" whenever I'm trying to get something out of an employee who might not be the right person. Sometimes I do say, "I'm sorry, you may not be the right person" but I don't really mean I'm apologizing. I'm just acknowledging the fact that I don't have an ironclad grip on their time. (But I still do mean, "I'm going to be polite and friendly while you find out how to answer my question, and you'll just have to do that.")

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

It's sort of like it, but sort of not.

Feh. It's complicated.

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

If anything, I'm overly prone to taking blame at this point. I sometimes feel it's easier to just blame myself than it is to have the conflict/discussion that would ensue if I pointed the blame where I thought it belonged. Of course, this is just as dishonest and poorly communicative as if I refused to take blame at all. Eit.

[emramesha.livejournal.com]

Pride used to stand in the way of saying "I'm sorry" but after losing a friend because of it, I will always apologize unconditionally. I find that if one starts a sentence with "I'm sorry, but..." that one isn't really offering an apology at all.

As for "I don't know", I've never been afraid to say that because intellectual honesty is never wrong in my book!

You raise some excellent points in your post, for sure.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! It's nice not to have MAS all the damn time. And it confuses people. Sometimes folks will look all astonished and say things like "You're so smart, you don't KNOW about that?" And I'll just smile and say "Nope. Not a clue. Care to enlighten me?"

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

What's MAS? It sounds like useful shorthand.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Male Answer Syndrome. That gender-linked tendency for men to pretend they pretty much know everything and can expound more or less convincingly on any subject.