I hate being wrong, it really gets to me. It mostly gets to me because my view of reality is the single greatest view there is, and anything that is inconsistent with my view of reality is in some way flawed, substandard or just plain unpleasant. So yeah, being wrong isn't a great thing for me. But what's even worse is when other people are right. I don't mean in the "molecular biologist knows more about cell mitosis than I do" way, I mean more in the "some stupid unfounded claim happens to be true via fluke and now the person thinks they're a genius" way.
I refuse to play poker with people who don't understand statistics for just that reason. "Oh, you should just play every hand, if you fold you've automatically lost!" No, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You scurry away to save your pennies for when you have a good hand... ugh, can't be bothered explaining it. It's the kind of person that goes all in on nothing then rivers a straight or something and now they think that they just know poker, when really their approach was completely and totally stupid and the odds were ridiculously high against them but they jagged a win despite being a retard! That kind of person, I hate those.
Can we make a distinction between being "right" and being "correct"? There isn't really a distinction in their current definitions, but for my purposes I'd like to make one: "Right" refers to your statement becoming true, while "correct" refers to your statement being informed, consistent with reality and not extraordinary or outlandish considering the outside stimulus. To use a silly example, say water was falling from the sky, which happens to be grey and cloudy. Now, you could make the claim that it's raining, or you could make the claim that a plane, carrying water, noiselessly exploded high in the atmosphere above you, obscured by the clouds, and that's where the water is coming from. At this point, these statements are both unproven, but one is more valid than the other, right? If it does come to pass that it was raining, you are both right and correct. If the plane scenario is the one that happened, however, you may be right, but you still aren't correct.
Following so far? The reason you aren't correct in the second instance is because you had no reason to believe that a water carrying plane noiselessly exploded above the clouds. There's no evidence of any of this; planes rarely (if ever, I can't think of a time where they would) carry large payloads of nothing but water, you have no aural, visible or tangible evidence that it's the case and the claim is quite extraordinary, relying on a lot of very specific things to happen at the the same time. So although your statement may in fact be consistent with what happened in reality at that exact moment, that doesn't make it correct, even though it's right.
Hypothetically, you could be correct, but not right at a given time. Flukes happen all the time. You may have quite luckily hit two sevens and a two to give you a full house out of the worst hand in a game of Texas Hold 'Em, (not explaining this all the way through, just take my word for it) but that doesn't mean you were smarter, or more insightful, or whatever. You got lucky. Hence, not correct, but still right. If you folded that hand, you'd be correct, but ultimately you wouldn't be right because in that specific instance playing the hand would have yielded a good result. However, you played the odds and should be commended. Well done, you were correct.
Unfortunately, this distinction between "right" and "correct" is a mere pipe dream for me, the man with the logic fetish. I suppose I'll have to remain content with... fuck, I couldn't think of a way to finish that sentence. Let's go with beer.
P.S. Yes, this post is a not-so-subtle dig at 2012 end-of-the-world believers, but it's been bugging me lately. I thought I was being all arty and metaphorical, but upon writing it I realise it's pretty obvious.
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