We were both wrong

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We were both wrong, but not equally wrong. You were at least six times more wronger than me.

Dr. Gregory House, House, Season 4: Frozen

The meaning of the quote

Cate Milton is a psychiatrist at a research station in Antarctica, and her stomach hurts. A storm keeps every plane on the ground, so the only doctor who can help is Dr. Gregory House, who has to diagnose her through a webcam. He bets on a kidney stone. She argues for dehydration and a gallstone. They agree that one blood test will settle it.

The results come back and rule out the kidney stone. House admits he missed, which doesn’t happen often, and in the same breath gives Cate a score. Her miss was at least 6 times bigger than his. The real cause turned out to be a broken big toe, and the Antarctic cold had hidden the pain.

That is the scene behind this quote. It comes from  Frozen, episode 11 of Season 4 of the TV show House, which aired on February 3, 2008. Liz Friedman wrote the episode.

The line is funny because House scores a mistake like a basketball game. It also holds a real idea. Being wrong comes in sizes, and the size tells you what to do next.

The writer Isaac Asimov made the same point in his essay The Relativity of Wrong. A reader had written to him arguing that scientists have been wrong in every century, so today’s scientists must be wrong too. Asimov answered that a person who thinks the Earth is flat and a person who thinks it’s a perfect sphere are both wrong, but the second person is off by a sliver.

Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

Most of us handle a mistake in one of 2 ways. We deny it, or we shrug and say everybody gets it wrong sometimes. Both skip the useful step, which is measuring how far off we were. A guess that missed by 5% needs a small tweak. A guess that missed by 500% needs a new plan.

House’s move has a second half that’s easy to miss. He starts with “we.” He puts himself in the wrong before he ranks anyone else, which is the reason Cate keeps talking to him. A miss only helps the people with the willingness to learn, and nobody learns from the person who only points at their errors.

The scoring has a catch. It works as a private tool and fails as a weapon. If you keep a tally of who was more wrong in an argument, you have stopped looking for the answer and started looking for a winner.

Action steps

The next time a plan or a guess falls apart, run it through these 3 steps. They take about 5 minutes.

1. Say your share first.
   Start with “I was wrong about this part” before you talk about anyone else’s mistake. The other person will keep listening.
2. Decide what would prove you wrong.
   House held Cate to the blood test they had agreed on, and she answered that results are open to interpretation. Avoid that argument by writing the test down before it runs. Write “If fewer than 20 people sign up in 2 weeks, my idea was wrong” and save the note.
3. Measure how far off you were.
   Ask whether the miss was small or huge. A small miss means adjust and try again. A huge miss means your starting assumption was off, so go back and change it.

Cate’s pain came from a broken toe that neither doctor had guessed. Being less wrong than the other person got House nowhere near it. The only way to the toe was through the next guess.

About the author

David Shore was 31 and a partner at a law firm in Toronto when he announced he was moving to Los Angeles to write for television. His colleagues told him he was insane. He had wanted to be a lawyer from age 12 until the second week of law school, and he drifted through the rest.

In Los Angeles he spent years writing practice scripts for Seinfeld and L.A. Law, then landed jobs on Due South, NYPD Blue and The Practice. In 2004 he pitched Fox a medical detective show inspired by Sherlock Holmes. That show was House

Dr. Gregory House is the head of diagnostic medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, known for the line “Everybody lies.” He walks with a cane because of a leg injury and takes Vicodin for the pain, which echoes Holmes and his cocaine. His best friend, Dr. James Wilson, plays the part of Dr. Watson, and his apartment number is 221B.

The casting story is the best part. British actor Hugh Laurie recorded his audition tape in a hotel bathroom in Namibia, the only room with enough light, while he was filming another movie. Director Bryan Singer watched the tape, assumed Laurie was American and pointed to him as the kind of actor the show needed.

Laurie went on to win 2 Golden Globe Awards for the role. In 2011 Guinness World Records named him the most-watched leading man on television. He also rowed for Cambridge in the 1980 Boat Race, and his father won an Olympic gold medal in rowing at the 1948 Games.

Resources

• Frozen (Wikipedia)
• The Relativity of Wrong (Article)
• The Relativity of Wrong (Book)
• Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (Book)
• On being wrong (Video)
• Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) (Book)
• The willingness to learn is a choice (Article)