The Curse of Being Right

Slipping below the short attention span of America's media, an amazing idea has been echoed from every successful businessman in every corner of Silicon Valley:

Nothing can be more wrong than being right.

As an engineer, solving problems has been my day job. I write complex, mission-critical automation tools that deliver software to thousands of sites around the world.

The most important thing I ever learned as an engineer was how to be wrong and how to accept criticism.

Today, highly-successful technology CEOs tell everyone who will listen to "fail fast and fail often." They're not saying that you should BE a failure, but that only human beings who admit their initial plan's failure quickly can accept criticism as advice and "pivot" their plan to become successful. Most often, new Internet startups fail not because they lack funds, but because they failed to listen to their users.

I am running for Minnesota State Representative this Fall in Lakeville. My opponent says she wants government to run like a business. She ran her tree-cutting business into the ground years ago. If we want government to run like a successful business, it must learn from mistakes before it succumbs to them.

I got into this race for the first time four years ago. At the time, I ran as an Independent, a candidate endorsed by the Green and Independence Parties because I was tired of being ignored by her. All of my friends were tired of being ignored by Mary Liz Holberg. She had fixed positions and a platform and did not care to hear from her voters. Unlike most representatives in other districts around the state, she did not visit homeowners to hear their views or attend public debates to subject her ideas to criticism. I had knocked on doors and listened to homeowners where families had not seen a politician darken their doors in almost three decades.

Imagine if politicians were elected based upon their ability to quickly discard false, partisan notions. Imagine if politicians responded to constituents they disagreed with, not by discounting them completely in one sentence, but by investigating their claims. Imagine if we governed, not by bills written by special interests like the American Legislative Exchange Council, but by involving the smartest people in our state in developing policy. As our governor Dayton has said many times, none of us is as smart as all of us.

Many of us are afraid to bring up politics at work or in public because someone inevitably gets too emotional and refuses to listen. The tendency to discard inconvenient or embarrassing facts is all too human. It is more human than admitting we are wrong.

Here's what I mean.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis was an assistant at a Vienna clinic. His clinic had a shocking rate of mortality in childbirth. Over ten percent of all mothers were dying of puerperal fever after giving birth. Mothers were giving birth on the streets because it was safer than his hospital. When his friend Jakob Kolletschka died from the same fever due to an accidental scalpel nick, Semmelweis began insisting that doctors wash their hands before handling the pregnant women as an experiment testing his hypothesis. Within a few months, the clinic's mortality rate had dropped to zero.

Did they promote Semmelweis? Did they award him a prize or a bonus?

No. The hospital fired him, ridiculed him, and forced him out of the Vienna medical system. In fact, a prize was awarded to opponents which rejected his "Germ Theory of Disease."

Semmelweis turned to alcohol. Within a few years, he was committed to a mental hospital where he soon died from an infected wound.

The doctors stubbornly rejected Semmelweis' theory because it was too embarrassing to admit that their mistakes had led to many thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Similarly, politicians reject the need to reform our broken medical system in America because it is too embarrassing to admit how many thousands of deaths and medical bankruptcies were unnecessary. It is too embarrassing to admit we're passing on the price of medical costs double the rest of the world in all American products. It is too embarrassing for politicians even to admit the patently obvious-- Mitt Romney the governor and Barack Obama the president shared nearly exactly the same right-wing health care solution. Obamacare is Romneycare.

We cannot stay competitive in world markets and blindly continue to pretend that we have the best medical system on Earth.

The issue I describe is the number one problem with politics in America. It isn't political action committees, advertising, or even a media entirely focused on the horserace while avoiding most substantive issues.

The top problem with politics is an inability to reason. Each side takes their corner of the ring and defends it. No one moves. No compromise occurs.

No one ever admits the obvious. Policies require nuance. Hypotheses require the scientific method. Only by testing and abandoning our half-baked ideas can we reach solutions that work. That's why both science and religion matters in politics, but your political ideas must never become religious convictions.

My opponent for Minnesota State Representative this Fall refused to accept the governor's veto pen last year. As our state's Ways and Means chair, she was responsible for our budget. Instead of overriding the veto, she used her power to attach many unpopular bills she had supported to our state's budget. This forced our governor into a Catch-22. Either he had to accept legislation that would upset most Minnesotans and also accept an extremely partisan redistricting that would hamstring his party for decades or else he had to shut down the state.

By shutting down our state last year, Representative Mary Liz Holberg chose to lay off 19,000 Minnesotans, to delay road construction, to close access to our state parks during peak summer travel season, and to cause headaches for Minnesotans seeking licenses and assistance from their state. It was the longest state shutdown in America in the last ten years.

We can afford a few mistakes. We cannot afford to always be right.

This is why we must teach critical thinking in schools.

We cannot afford the curse of always being right.