The ancients believed that it is human nature to err. And that’s okay. Moreover, neuroscientist Henning Beck is convinced that it is worth abandoning perfectionism and allowing yourself to make mistakes where it is necessary to find new solutions, develop and create.
Who wouldn’t want to have a perfect brain? Works flawlessly, efficiently and accurately — even when the stakes are high and the pressure is enormous. Well, just like the most accurate supercomputer! Unfortunately, the human brain does not work so perfectly. Making mistakes is the basic principle of how our mind works.
Biochemist and neuroscientist Henning Beck writes: “How easily does the brain make mistakes? Ask a guy from one of the largest online marketplaces who tried to activate service mode for servers two years ago. He made a small typo on the command line to activate the maintenance protocol. And as a result, large parts of the servers failed, and losses rose to hundreds of millions of dollars. Just because of a typo. And no matter how hard we try, these mistakes will eventually happen again. Because the brain can’t afford to get rid of them.»
If we always avoid mistakes and risks, we will miss the opportunity to act boldly and achieve new results.
Many people think that the brain works in a logically structured way: from point A to point B. Thus, if there is a blunder at the end, we just need to analyze what went wrong in the previous stages. In the end, everything that happens has its reasons. But that’s not the point — at least not at first glance.
In fact, the areas of the brain that control actions and generate new thoughts are working chaotically. Beck gives an analogy — they compete like sellers at a farmers’ market. The competition takes place between different options, action patterns living in the brain. Some are useful and correct; others are completely unnecessary or erroneous.
“If you’ve been to a farmers’ market, you’ve noticed that sometimes the seller’s advertising is more important than the quality of the product. Thus, the loudest rather than the best products can become more successful. Similar things can happen in the brain: the pattern of action, for any reason, becomes so dominant that it suppresses all other options, ”Beck develops the thought.
The «farmers’ market region» in our head where all options are compared is the basal ganglia. Sometimes one of the action patterns becomes so strong that it overshadows the others. So the “loud” but wrong scenario dominates, passes through the filter mechanism in the anterior cingulate cortex and leads to an error.
Why is this happening? There could be many reasons for that. Sometimes it’s pure statistics leading to an obvious but wrong pattern of dominance. “You yourself have encountered this when you tried to quickly pronounce a tongue twister. Incorrect speech patterns predominate over correct ones in your basal ganglia because they are easier to pronounce,” says Dr. Beck.
This is how tongue twisters work and how our thinking style is fundamentally tuned: instead of planning everything perfectly, the brain will determine a rough goal, develop many different options for action and try to filter out the best one. Sometimes it works, sometimes an error pops up. But in any case, the brain leaves the door open for adaptation and creativity.
If we analyze what happens in the brain when we make a mistake, we can understand that many areas are involved in this process — the basal ganglia, the frontal cortex, the motor cortex, and so on. But one region is missing from this list: the one that controls fear. Because we don’t have an inherited fear of making a mistake.
No child is afraid to start talking because they might say something wrong. As we grow up, we are taught that mistakes are bad, and in many cases this is a valid approach. But if we always try to avoid mistakes and risks, we will miss the opportunity to act boldly and achieve new results.
The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.
The brain will create even absurd thoughts and action patterns, and therefore there is always a risk that we will do something wrong and fail. Of course, not all mistakes are good. If we are driving a car, we must follow the rules of the road, and the cost of a mistake is high. But if we want to invent a new machine, we must dare to think in a way that no one has thought before — without even knowing if we will succeed. And absolutely nothing new will happen or be invented if we always nip errors in the bud.
“Everyone who yearns for the “perfect” brain must understand that such a brain is anti-progressive, unable to adapt and can be replaced by a machine. Instead of striving for perfectionism, we should value our ability to make mistakes,” says Henning Beck.
The ideal world is the end of progress. After all, if everything is perfect, where should we go next? Perhaps this is what Konrad Zuse, the German inventor of the first programmable computer, had in mind when he said: “The danger of computers becoming like people is not as great as the danger of people becoming like computers.”
About the author: Henning Beck is a biochemist and neuroscientist.