Mistakes Smart People Make

No one knows why people do what they do.

—Donald Draper

There’s a Mad Men quote for any white people in the audience, and what a pithy fragment of writing it is. If truth is beauty, then this is an aesthetic experience in nine words. After all, do you always know your own reasons for everything you do?

When asked to explain a past action of mine, here are my favorite euphemisms for  “I have not a clue”:

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Note the attempt to shift blame to my past self, that idiot.

Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.

Note the attempt to shift blame to the other members of the group “we.” Often these members are simply the rest of humanity.

I guess I just didn’t think about it.

Translation: I’m so oblivious that not only did I screw up, I wouldn’t have even realized my mistake if those affected by it didn’t point it out explicitly.

Now here’s the really confusing part. If we’re so bad at rationalizing our own behavior, even after the fact, why do we keep trying to rationalize the behavior of others? Why do we try to infer broad conclusions from sporadic incidents? It’s just like performing an experiment with no method, no control, and plenty of confounding noise. The fifth graders at the local elementary school are running better experiments than these. No need to even mention statistical significance, but there it is, the last coffin nail.

There is an easier way of discovering what makes a person tick than chasing this scary web of inferences in the dark.

Conversation, they call it. Imagine twitter or txting, but more like a thoughtful human being with an attention span and less like a caffeinated hamster.

Let’s practice. What are your thoughts on this?