The Arrogance of Being Right

You mistook agreement for validation. Now what?

Apr 08, 2025

👋 Hey, it’s Bryan. Welcome to BEing Human, where we discuss what it takes to lead, perform at your best, and connect Human-to-Human.

Arguing from certainty is like building a house on a trampoline. It feels solid, sturdy, unshakeable - until someone else steps onto the surface. Then the whole thing starts to bounce. Wobble. Expose the instability underneath.

And what do we do?

We don’t question the foundation. We don’t ask if the surface we’re standing on was built to hold complexity. No. We blame the other person for jumping.

We’ve turned being “right” into a moral high ground. A declaration of identity. In our hyper-connected, hyper-reactive culture, being right doesn’t just mean accurate - it means superior. The subtext is loud: If I’m right, and you disagree, you must be stupid. Or lazy. Or worse - dangerous.

Let’s be honest. We don’t want dialogue. We want dominance.

But here’s the thing: disagreement is not a diagnosis. And the assumption that it is? That’s not intelligence. That’s the ego in a cosplay of objectivity.

A 2019 study in Nature Human Behaviour showed that people with higher cognitive ability tend to overestimate how widely their beliefs are shared. Let that land for a second. The smarter we think we are, the more likely we are to believe the world agrees with us - and that those who don’t are just uninformed stragglers.

So if you’ve ever thought, If they just knew what I know, they’d agree with me - congratulations. You’ve just outed yourself as part of the problem.

Not Everything Is a Logic Puzzle

People love to pretend that disagreement is just a matter of evidence. That with enough facts, they can bludgeon their opponent into submission. This is a fantasy - a convenient delusion sold to those who want to believe the world is tidy, governed by reason alone.

But humans aren’t computers. We don’t run on logic - we run on meaning and context.

What you believe is shaped by your values. And your values are shaped by your story. Your culture. Your trauma. Your ambitions. The things you’re afraid to admit, even to yourself.

Two people can look at the same dataset and walk away with opposite takeaways, because they’re not looking for the same thing. They’re not asking the same questions. They don’t measure truth in the same currency.

So when you say, They just don’t get it, what you often mean is, They don’t see it like I do. And that’s not a failure of theirs.

It’s a failure of your imagination.

Humility Isn’t Niceness. It’s Power.

We’ve done something grotesque to the word humility. We’ve bleached it and softened it. Made it palatable for corporate mission statements and hashtag culture.

But real humility? It’s feral. Sharp. Hard-won.

It doesn’t look like passive agreement or performative self-deprecation. It looks like sitting in the fire of someone else’s truth—and not flinching.

It looks like being willing to be wrong, not for show, but for real. It means surrendering the fantasy that your perspective is the axis around which the world spins.

A 2020 review in Personality and Social Psychology Review links intellectual humility with better leadership, less polarization, and more decisive decision-making. Because the leaders who make the best calls aren’t the ones who cling to certainty like a lifeline, they’re the ones who know how to listen. Who know that “being right” is cheap, but being authentic is rare - and infinitely more valuable.

They don’t walk into a conversation looking for confirmation. They walk in looking to learn.

The Echo Chamber Is Not the World

Here’s another uncomfortable truth: most people you think “don’t get it” simply haven’t bought into your particular reality. They don’t live inside your algorithms. They don’t worship at your intellectual altar. They’ve built their mental models on entirely different ground, and the fact that they don’t sound like you doesn’t make them wrong.

It makes them other.

And your job (or life) - if you care about truth and progress - is not to drag them into your mental framework.

It’s to ask what theirs is built from.

To stop defending your house on a trampoline and start asking who else is in the neighborhood, and why their blueprints look different.

You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to change your mind. But you're not a critical thinker if you’re unwilling to explore the why behind their what.

You’re just good at arguing.

Let People Be Complex

The world doesn’t need more people who talk in absolutes. Who reduce complexity into slogans. Who can’t handle ambiguity without collapsing into rage or ridicule.

We need people who can hold tension.

People who can hear, I see it differently, and not translate that into You’re attacking me.

We need adults.

Because if every disagreement feels like a threat to your identity, you haven’t built a self - you’ve built a fortress. And fortresses don’t connect. They defend. They isolate.

And they crumble.

Lean way in

The next time you’re tempted to dunk on someone for not seeing the world your way, take a breath. Ask a better question. Stop confusing disagreement with deficiency.

If your confidence can’t survive another perspective, it’s not confidence. It’s insecurity dressed up in data points.

You want to be respected? Be the person who doesn’t flinch in the face of difference.

Be the one who stays open when it would be easier to shut down.

Because the goal is not to be the loudest person in the room.

The goal is to be the person who makes the room more intelligent, more profound, braver - just by being in it.

That takes an edge.

That takes guts.

That takes humility.

Most of all, it takes courage to admit that being right has never been the same as being wise.

Stay human.
—Bryan

Comments are open to all subscribers. You can also upgrade your subscription.

BEing Human