February 15, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

The game show Jeopardy! features contestants who can memorize vast catalogs of facts, react with split-second timing, and manage to remain charming under pressure. When they answer correctly, they are rewarded with applause and game points. When they miss, the game’s host rarely says, “Wrong!” He uses a short and gentle “No” before moving on to another contestant for the correct answer. It is a small distinction, but not a trivial one. “No” is a neutral acknowledgement of the error in the answer. “Wrong” feels closer to correcting the person. This week I want to explore several shades of wrong.

There are wrong answers. Some are entirely wrong; others are nearly right. In school, one teacher may award partial credit; another may not. A student might miss a problem by a sign error or by misreading a date. The final answer is incorrect but the student’s methodology is sound. Students should be developing their problem solving abilities, not regurgitating answers.

On the other hand, the inclusiveness of the K-12 education system requires a certain degree of industrialization. These include efficient methods like multiple choice tests which can be graded quickly. Answers are either correct or incorrect, a binary framework that is at odds with the problems and choices that students will make throughout their adult lives. Students are not rewarded for recognizing subtleties that confuse a distinction between two choices. Too often, our schools do not make the time to explore these distinctions because the schools themselves must meet certain curriculum standards.

One of the mysteries of any language is why we use the same word to describe entirely different phenomenon. Language itself is a deception. The word wrong describes a misplaced decimal on a math test and the killing of a small child.

We are often guilty of judging others using a binary scale. They are wrong or they are not. When we judge ourselves, however, the edges blur. We were almost right. We lacked the data. Our timing was off. Circumstances interfered. Our error was circumstantial. When others are wrong, it says something about their character.

Economists and financial analysts are famous for this subtle dance. The forecast failed not because they were wrong, but because new variables emerged. They offer their predictions in a confident manner then disregard their errors. Instead, they shift their explanations. The model was sound, but the inputs changed. The thesis was correct, but the market behaved irrationally. Being wrong is reframed as being early, or misinformed, or misunderstood. Most economists failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis because their mathematical models regarded money as neutral. According to Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen, the models “failed to account for the critical roles that banks and other financial institutions play in the economy” (Source).

In his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman distinguished two types of reasoning. The first is fast and intuitive, able to generate a coherent story from limited information. Despite the thin evidence, the coherence of the story gives us confidence in the story. Not only are we inclined to make errors in forming these quick impressions, but we feel certain while doing so. The discomfort of discovering we were wrong threatens that internal narrative coherence. It is easier to revise the story than to accept that we misjudged it.

Children are especially prone to fast thinking because the capacity for slow, deliberative thinking takes time to mature. We have to learn sustained attention, abstract reasoning, and an impulse control to check our first impressions. Secondly, a child’s ego boundaries are porous. There is often little distinction between what they do and who they are. An incorrect answer does not merely indicate a mistake but an indictment of a child’s identity. “I got it wrong” becomes “I am wrong.” A hurried or impatient remark from a teacher can seal that association. The act and the person committing the act become fused together in a child’s mind.

Part of growing into adulthood is learning how to separate the act and the agent. We learn to distance ourselves from our mistakes as we grow older. We distance our present self from the self we were twenty years ago to help reconcile our mistakes. Our fifty year old self groans at some of the choices we made when we were twenty. We tell ourselves that mistakes are part of our growing process. A child is more likely to feel shame for the error, to feel exposed and vulnerable. Being wrong may feel as though one’s self is diminished. Even worse is the feeling of being a fraud, as though the child has been deceiving others. Deception is the other axis I want to explore this week.

Is deception wrong? Like so many of the topics I discuss each week, this question does not have a yes or no answer. Within the confines of a game, deception is a strategy. This is true in poker, in football, and in politics. In The Prince, Machiavelli wrote that rulers should be like foxes, masters of deception. In a democracy, politics is a team sport which requires some deception. Politicians often broadcast the talking points of their party’s leadership. Only in the waning days of their political career do they share their private thoughts with the public.

However, deception requires craft. President Trump uses a different strategy, tossing out exaggerations and lies like nuggets of fool’s gold. The greatest economy in the history of the country, the greatest deregulation, the greatest blah, blah, blah. Deception implies disguise. There is no disguise here. Just a shot gun shower of exaggerated and false claims. Liberal media organizations pick up each nugget, examine it and reveal the fact that there is no gold! Conservative media attacks not the claims themselves, but the methods and assumptions of liberal media organizations. It’s a media melee like the closing section of the 1974 comedic movie Blazing Saddles, but this is not a comedy. These are adults with the power to change or destroy lives.

In his book Determined: A science of life without free will, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky (2023, pg. 388) writes that our capacity for self-deception helps us cope with the capacity for understanding truths about life like our own mortality. According to evolutionary biologists, self-deception can be a survival strategy. We are social animals. If we can convince ourselves of something, it makes the task of convincing others much easier. If we refuse to admit error to ourselves, we can convince others that we did not commit an error. I couldn’t have done something as stupid as a misplaced decimal point on that answer. No, my pencil must have broke while I was writing out the answer and the pencil made a stray mark in the wrong place. We smooth out the edges of our narrative then present it to others. We are not deceivers, but craftsmen polishing a story to bring out its luster.

A newspaper may carry a misleading advertisement in the middle of an article debunking a politician’s claim. Media outlets claim that they are common carriers. They are merely hosts selling space to advertisers. They are not responsible for the content of the advertising unless expressly illegal like advertising that promotes illegal drug use. They disavow any association between their hard hitting journalism and the dubious claims made by their advertisers. Is that a deception?

Why do people get into politics? The belief that they can do some good is one reason. People do not agree on good policy though and that leads to a bitter and divided politics. Helping the poor? One side believes that it is good policy, that it is right. Leviticus 19:10 of the Bible says that we should leave some of the grape harvest for the poor. The other side says that helping the poor is not a duty for the federal government so such programs are bad policy, that it is wrong. They are betrayals of the Constitution. They cause harm to the poor by making them dependent on charity. When a government takes from one person and gives to another, that is a forced charity, a moral offense.

Why do we have a low tolerance for being wrong? If we could tolerate being factually incorrect, we might be less inclined to use deception. We might hear a politician say, “I was mistaken,” or an economist admit, “My assumptions were wrong.” We might build a greater trust in public figures. Being wrong is inevitable yet the experience of being wrong is intolerable for some of us. A simple error becomes a moral failure we when we try to cover up the error. To admit we were wrong requires a confidence in our identity. Perhaps that is the ultimate self-deception, the failure to admit that we don’t have confidence in who we are. Something to think about and I hope I will see you next week.

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Photo by Volodymyr Yarossvit on Unsplash