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“Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one”- Voltaire

 

Rohan and Meera sat across from each other at a restaurant, with their food cold. What began as a casual conversation at a date turned quicky into a duel. Rohan insisted that the decline in sales in their office was due to changing customer preferences, whereas Meera disagreed. Both went at it, where each opinion felt like a sword swung against the other. Neither paused to examine the other’s point. Each interruption became sharper, each response enticed the other to come up with something more logical, as if they would fail if their logic did the same. The two people here were involved in a argument with the sole purpose of protecting the feeling of being right.

Moments like this are everywhere. From offices to homes. But why do these disagreements occur?

Because it feels good to be right. It shows competence, intelligence, and social status. Over time, these opinions we hold have gone from being ideas to identity. It’s not about sharing thoughts anymore and trying to find some common truth, but more about defending your opinions as if they represent who you are.

This reflects a problem deep rooted into our psychology, which is that we crave cognitive closure. So, when any form of uncertainty creeps into our consciousness we cling to our known experiences and opinions as they feel comfortable and ignore any new information which could challenge what we know. This is called Confirmation bias. This makes us emotionally invested in an opinion making it harder to let go of, which reduces the importance of finding the truth and make it about ego preservation.

Technology has made it worse, with social media apps amplifying this phenomenon. These platforms focus on confidence and any form of critical thinking, that can make people think and question their opinions, gets ignored. Over time, the validation such platform provides becomes addictive. The virtual world also has real-life consequences. There are arguments between companions instead of conversations, friendships, and even family members become fractured due to political disagreements, not necessarily due to the topic itself, but due to the unwillingness to accept some level of uncertainty. Organizations make the same mistake, with managers doubling down on wrong strategies, costing the firm millions.

History has repeatedly shown how fruitful uncertainty can be when it takes the form of curiosity. Innovations and science have been built on the willingness to be wrong. For ages, widely accepted beliefs have persisted just because challenging them would imply confronting authority and ego, but progress can only occur when there is curiosity amongst us. Growth, ironically, is dependent on error. We start walking by learning to fall first. Successful athletes put as much weight on failures as they do on success; entrepreneurs iterate through unsuccessful ideas to reach the successful ones. When we learn to accept that we can be wrong about something we display signs of intellectual courage and not weakness.

How can we deal with this uncertainty? By understanding that we are not our opinions; they are a part of us. Being wrong about these opinions doesn’t make us inadequate. We should be curious about things. Start by listening, like genuinely listening to others before responding. This should also be followed culturally, with leaders respected for admitting mistakes rather than being criticised. Our education system should reward questioning, not just the ability to answer correctly.

Perhaps the real question isn’t whether we are addicted to being right. Perhaps it is whether we are willing to choose truth over ego. Because truth is not something one person wins. It is something people discover together.