Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong

“If I am the wisest man,” said Socrates, “it is because I alone know that I know nothing.” the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, “John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that “right” and “wrong” are absolute; that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

This is old-ish, but I just ran across it; I had written something vaguely similar recently in response to a Feynman video about there being varying degrees of wrong, but Asimov goes into some nice detail in quantifying “wrong,” and filling in the shades of grey to contrast with the black-and-white of right vs. wrong. It is reminiscent of George Box’s quote, All models are wrong, but some are useful