Let others be wrong if they want; it’s not your job to fix their errors

I spent much of my life trying to correct the rest of the world.

I knew the facts. I knew what was rational. I was absolutely certain of myself. I was arrogant enough to believe I knew what other people ought to believe. How they ought to live. What they ought to say. And I would argue with almost anybody, especially online. All of these idiotic beliefs kept me miserable.

I had to learn a humbling lesson. Nobody wanted me to correct him or her. Even if I was right, my arrogant attitude and insistence on “fixing” others made me wrong. It took me years to learn that.

I see plenty of people around me today who still haven’t learned this lesson — and that is often keeping them unhappy, arrogant and bitter, even if they can’t admit it to themselves.

So I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned. You can accept this lesson or you can ignore it. That’s up to you. Ready?

Let people be wrong.

Don’t argue with them. Don’t try to prove you’re right. Don’t try to prove they’re wrong. You have nothing to gain by arguing. Even if the other person is objectively wrong, so what? Are you really making a difference now if you’re going around correcting people? How’s that working out for you?

Let me add a few things I’ve learned that support this notion, at least for me.

First, human beings will almost always eventually believe whatever they want to believe, not necessarily what objective evidence suggests is true. But we’re almost always certain that we are the ones who followed the evidence to its reasonable and rational conclusion.

When we come to understand that humans are wildly irrational most of the time, we somehow forget that we are human — and that we can be irrational, too. But when we are being irrational, we don’t realize it. We can be just as stupid and ignorant and arrogant as those people we point fingers at. (Even you. Even me.)

Second, people who you knew were stupid or ignorant in the past don’t magically get smarter or wiser. Stupid people rarely change. Ignorant people rarely educate themselves. They just tend to get more confident and become less conscious of their ignorance and their stupidity.

You can’t do anything about this. You just have to accept it.

Third, if you form a conclusion before you look seriously at the evidence, you’ll almost always find the “proof” to back up what you’ve decided to believe. It’s like magic. This is true about pretty much everything, but it’s especially true when it comes to things about which you have a strong emotional investment — such as politics or religion.

Fourth, most people arguing about politics (or almost anything) online have neither the historical nor philosophical knowledge to have rational opinions. So they latch onto whichever positions appeal to their emotions and ignorance. When you see things they say which are factually untrue and completely irrational to assert, it’s easy to believe you can easily “educate” them. But it doesn’t work that way.

These people who are either ignorant or have low IQs don’t understand this about themselves. They’re not going to suddenly see the light because you explain things to them. Honest.

Fifth, even when two people see the same set of facts, their conclusions can be entirely different — depending on their histories, values, needs, desires and egos. This is equally true in politics, romance and commerce. You and your spouse (or ex) see your relationship differently. People of different ideologies see political actions entirely differently. Two rational people can make entirely different decisions about which computer or phone to buy or which political or philosophical position to support.

In every part of life, our perceptions and experiences push us toward subjective conclusions, but almost everybody believes he’s the one making the objectively correct decisions. We are fooling ourselves, sometimes as much as the people who frustrate us so much with their ignorance.

Unless we want to exist in a perpetual war of all against all, we have to find ways to allow people and groups to voluntarily go their own ways in peace without killing one another. That is the core issue humans have to face — accepting that we don’t have to be right and that we can allow other people to live in ways we find immoral or mistaken.

It hurts me that so many people eagerly share obvious lies simply because those lies support what they already want to believe. This makes my brain hurt and it makes my heart hurt.

Even people who are relatively bright fall for obvious lies when believing the truth would require them to change some of what they believe. Truth matters to me — and it hurts to see lies winning — but I see no way to save people from their own intellectual laziness. It’s painful to watch.

And there’s one more reason to stop arguing with everybody in sight.

Every now and then, you will discover that you have been wrong about something had had thought — and leaving others alone will save your ego from being hurt and it will make it easier for you to change your views when you need to correct your own errors. You might not think this applies to you, but it does. It applies to me and it applies just as surely to you.

The more you argue, the more likely you are to hold onto your mistaken beliefs later — even when the more honest part of your brain has realized you were wrong.

A few minutes ago, I ventured onto Facebook for the first time in quite awhile, because I wanted to see how people were reacting to a major world event — and I was appalled.

I saw people posting things (and sharing others’ posts) that were wildly ignorant. Much of what I saw was fit only for idiots who were looking for confirmation of what they already believed.

But I didn’t reply to any of it. I wasn’t going to make a difference anyway. The error I had made was bothering to look at the idiocy and ignorance they were spouting in the first place. I wasn’t going to change their views. To protect my sanity — and achieve exactly the same thing that arguing would have achieved — I had to simply move on.

The people posting the things I saw were widely wrong. Objectively wrong. But there was not a thing I could do about it.

I had to remind myself once again that it’s not my job to correct their errors. I have to let others be wrong — if that’s what they choose for themselves.

You might just find that adopting this attitude would make your life more peaceful, too. Just think about it.

Note: The cartoon is a classic from the online comic xkcd from 2008.