Hard to admit when I’m wrong

This Tech Talk column originally appeared in The Exponent (University of Alabama in Huntsville), Vol. 33, No. 24 (March 14, 2002). Digitized issue: UAH LOUIS archive. Reproduced here courtesy of that archive.

It’s hard for me to admit when I’m wrong. I’d like to pretend that the difficulty comes from having learned to trust my judgment after being right time after time after time. It’s a nice fantasy. Ego seems to be hard at work here, repeatedly urging us, “You’re right! Don’t listen! Stick to your guns!”

The pattern is simple: choose sides (more often than we’d like to admit, the decision is based on an emotional gut reaction), close your mind, dig in your heels, and trade talking points. Do we care about finding the truth, or are we happy to merely believe that we’re right?

In The Objectivist in September 1971, Ayn Rand wrote, “I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, the rest follows.” Reason and rationality are precious gifts, but we seem to forsake them more often than not.

Consider America’s consumer debt. I’ve never heard anyone even suggest that taking on a penny of debt at twenty- and now even thirty-percent credit card interest rates is a good idea. Debt destroys lives, but people are willing to pay extraordinary costs to satisfy their emotions. “You have to have it now! You work hard. You deserve it!” Marsellus Wallace was right on when he said, “Pride only hurts.”

Evidently, reason is a much less seductive master to serve than emotion. We in technical fields like to chide the folks in Morton and Roberts for being too touchy-feely and subjective, but are we much better? Look at the few cheerleading contests just in the area of software: Unix versus Windows, emacs versus vi, C versus C++ versus Java. Even the folks who chose the right side in the Unix versus Windows debate (!) inherit another: proprietary versus open systems. Even that leads to others. The open-software camp divides along the lines of Linux (which divides into Red Hat versus SuSE versus Debian) versus BSD (which divides into OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD).

That open-source tribalism shades into other fights too—envy attacks accusing Microsoft of not paying their “fair share,” whatever that is. Government action, however, should not be based on popularity. Has Microsoft violated anyone’s rights? (No, you don’t have a right to purchase an operating system or a suite of office software for fifty bucks.)

In cases where Microsoft has broken contracts or otherwise violated a real right, then the company should be punished. The thought of the government stepping in and breaking up a company for being too successful is chilling. Microsoft didn’t have the advantage of a government-granted monopoly; they got out there and beat (or bought) their competitors. Can anyone specify damage to the consumer without resorting to such myths as “predatory pricing”? I went wrong on this issue by following emotion, but using reason makes the correct choice much clearer.