Being wrong

I think it’s important to note this in public: Sometimes, I’m wrong.

I don’t know everything. Sometimes, my opinions are based on things I’ve been told second-hand, or on things I don’t fully understand yet. Sometimes, the facts that I believe to be truthful and accurate turn out to be outdated, or incorrect. Sometimes, I do or say things that I believe to be the best possible action or statement to make at the time, and it isn’t.

The Web, and the Internet at large (which includes non-Web ecosystems like email, IRC, and so on), is full of too many people that never want to admit they are wrong. The Internet is a fairly permanent medium of record; if you are wrong, it will be forever very obvious that you were wrong. I believe this contributes to people going out of their way to always be “right”, even when they know they aren’t. Otherwise they will look foolish in public forever.

Well, sometimes I’m wrong. That wrongness has been recorded before. In public. Forever. It will almost assuredly happen again, too. And when it does, I’ll note it, and possibly write a correction article, or a response email, or ping an affected party on IRC, and note that I was wrong.

The Internet needs more people to admit to being less than perfect, and to note their assumptions when writing. I hope that leads to more intellectual honesty, of which I find the Internet to be increasingly devoid.