What are you wrong about?

[Lorizael]

So, for example, I adhere to this weird policy of non-interference both personally and politically that derives from some of my philosophical convictions. I've long believed I might be wrong about this policy and would discover that if I delved deeper into the logical implications of my system. This isn't exactly something I am factually wrong about, though. On that front, I know that I still retain a lot of folk historical knowledge that is likely wrong (and thus not actually knowledge).

[Giancarlo]

I was wrong in the past. I admitted that much. I discovered my true self. As a truly androgynous and norm breaking person, I'm just being me. Now I'm being real.

[Lorizael]

Again, pretty much everyone (save maybe Trump) is capable of realizing they believed incorrect things in the past. The point is that being right and being wrong feel identical, so even though you feel right about X now, it's certainly possible you're wrong about X, because you felt right about Y in the past and were wrong about Y. This thread is about trying to identify X.

[Giancarlo]

Wrong about things at present? Well... Sometimes my temper still gets the best of me and I am in wrong in not controlling it better. Sometimes I feel getting mad when someone cuts me off on the free way is the right way. Really I need to better avoid escalation.

I'm working on it.

[Lorizael]

i briefly thought ted talks were useful

I forgot that there's actually a joke about the uselessness of TED talks near the end of this one. I'd recommend watching, even though it still falls prey to some of the common tropes.

[Lorizael]

Wrong about things at present? Well... Sometimes my temper still gets the best of me and I am in wrong in not controlling it better. Sometimes I feel getting mad when someone cuts me off on the free way is the right way. Really I need to better avoid escalation.

I'm working on it.

It's interesting how much trouble people have even attempting to answer this question. I'm not asking about your personal foibles. Again, other than maybe Trump, very few of us believe ourselves to be perfect. But despite being able to recall instances in which we were factually incorrect about some subject, we generally can't think of anything we are factually incorrect about right now.

You might interject, well duh, if I thought I were wrong about something, I'd change my mind and no longer be wrong. But the point is that, while it seems inescapable for us to have anything other than high confidence in something we say we believe, it's almost a guarantee that some of our high-confidence beliefs are, in fact, incorrect. What this means is that answering the question involves interrogating your beliefs to find out which ones might actually be wrong.

During an earlier stage of my life, when I had a job that afforded me plenty of time in front of a computer without much to do, I would browse wikipedia and other relatively reliable sites with the specific goal of challenging my gut-level knowledge--the stuff I had simply picked up along the way from my brothers, parents, friends, and sources for which I did not have a citation. There was so much I was wrong about, even if most of that wrongness was minor and inconsequential.

When I first started to discover that I had incorrect beliefs (an ongoing process not solely limited to that one job), I was nervous, scared even, and often attempted to rescue my beliefs somehow. But eventually discovering yet another incorrect belief made me giddy. It was amusing and liberating; there goes another one! I fail at this, but nowadays I try as much as possible not to be wedded to particular beliefs but to the process of discovering what is and is not true. Part of that requires understanding that my perspective is a limited one and that I can be wrong despite having the right information, which means correcting my beliefs involves seeking out new perspectives.

[ZEE]

I was wrong in thinking it was Beelzebub and Satan that showed me the life-changing revelation about Chaos that freed my mind and in turn lead me to realize that bullies are the true evil of this world and standing up to them is my new purpose in life...

It was God. And I believe I will now be a Cherubim when I die and kick demon ass.

[Aeson]

If AAHZ can be wrong ... maybe Elok isn't a nerd?

[BeBMan]

When I was around 14 I was the kind of atheist who thought all religion stuff is per se bad, and would go away with science/tech progress. In the meantime I thought it would be a good idea to bore anyone about the - as I saw it - evils of religion to convert ppl to true atheism, the single one path to happiness and world peace

[BeBMan]

So, what is it that I might be wrong about? Well, that could be basically everything. /braininthevat

[kentonio]

It's interesting how much trouble people have even attempting to answer this question. I'm not asking about your personal foibles. Again, other than maybe Trump, very few of us believe ourselves to be perfect. But despite being able to recall instances in which we were factually incorrect about some subject, we generally can't think of anything we are factually incorrect about right now.

I could be wrong that your question is far too specific and that people have basically ignored it for a good reason. I don't think I am, but I could be.

[Giancarlo]

It seems as if I misunderstood the question. This is a question you should have asked me when I was 20 or 21, when my entire belief system changed because it was entirely wrong

[Sava]

we generally can't think of anything we are factually incorrect about right now.

Nobody can be "wrong" about anything right now because the "right now" referred to in the thread is precisely the time when we read your post. At that time, we are not expressing any supposed factual belief.

The correct answer: nothing

[Lorizael]

I could be wrong that your question is far too specific and that people have basically ignored it for a good reason. I don't think I am, but I could be.

I and others have already given examples of things we might be wrong about.

It seems as if I misunderstood the question. This is a question you should have asked me when I was 20 or 21, when my entire belief system changed because it was entirely wrong

Just maybe, discovering that you're wrong about a whole lot of things should lead you to believe that you're fallible.

Nobody can be "wrong" about anything right now because the "right now" referred to in the thread is precisely the time when we read your post. At that time, we are not expressing any supposed factual belief.

The correct answer: nothing

Interestingly, you've touched on a debate in epistemology/philosophy of mind about what constitutes belief. Two of the big theories are representationalism and dispositionalism. Under representationalism, to believe something is to have, in your head, some token that represents that belief. Under dispositionalism, on the other hand, to believe something is merely to be predisposed to act in a certain way which would accord with that belief. So, for example, if it's raining, then a representationalist has a little thought bubble that says, "It's raining," which corresponds to this belief. A dispositionalist doesn't have this, but rather is predisposed to, say, pick up an umbrella before leaving the house. A representationalist can clearly be wrong if their mind contains propositions that are false, even if they don't express them.

But when is a dispositionalist wrong? You might argue that they are wrong only if they express a false proposition, which they would be predisposed to do if they believe something false. But I don't think this is the right tack to take. For example, suppose a meteor (with mass > m kg) is going to strike the Earth (in time < t days) but no one knows about it. It seems absurd to think that the representationalist has the corresponding thought bubble, "The Earth is not going to be struck by a meteor," which means the representationalist doesn't possess an incorrect belief.

I don't think the dispositionalist gets off so easily, however. A dispositionalist, if they knew the Earth was going to be struck, would be predisposed to take certain actions, like finding a bunker or stocking up on ammo or tracking down the girl who got away, etc. But as a dispositionalist's beliefs are constituted only of their dispositions, not believing the Earth is going to be struck by a meteor is identical to believing that the Earth isn't going to be struck by a meteor, because their actions are identical in either case. And that means it would be fair to say that, if the Earth is going to be a struck by a meteor and the dispositionalist doesn't know it, then they have an incorrect belief even if they don't express any false propositions.

So either way you're wong.

Edit: (Philosophers don't think there are people whose beliefs are representationalist in nature and other people whose beliefs are dispositionalist in nature, obviously. They believe one theory or another is correct. I'm only speaking in terms of representationalist and dispositionalist believers as a shorthand, except I've now added a whole paragraph and haven't saved myself anything. Especially because I'm going to add an entirely new thought, which is that some people think dispositionalism is the way to go because representationalism seems to correspond to a particular brain setup, which might not be the case for AIs/aliens, who we might still want to say believe things even if their belief-storing mechanisms are radically different from ours.)

[Giancarlo]

I had problems back then. But now I know I'm not wrong at all.