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as they set about trying to solve the puzzle. Through experimenting with the robot, the subjects frequently disproved their own initial hypotheses. But (as the psychologists Clark Chinn and William Brewer summarized the situation), “subjects who had no alternative hypotheses readily available were less likely to abandon a hypothesis that had been disconfirmed by anomalous data than were subjects who had a readily available alternative. Apparently, a bad theory was better than no theory at all.” Clark Chinn and Thomas Brewer, “The Role of Anomalous Data in Knowledge Acquisition: A Theoretical Framework and Implications for Science Instruction,” Review of Educational Research, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Spring 1993): 22. The original experiment is in David Klahr and Kevin Dunbar, “Dual Space Search during Scientific Reasoning,” Cognitive Science, Vol. 12 (1988): 1–48.

“All historically significant theories” (FN). Kuhn, 147

“servile conformism.” Al-Ghazali (2006), 25. The alternative translation offered in the footnote is from Al Ghazzali (2007), 20–21. That one is less acerbic and more sympathetic: “Having once surrendered blind belief, it is impossible to return to it, for the essence of such belief is to be unconscious of itself. As soon as this unconsciousness ceases it is shattered like a glass whose fragments cannot be again reunited except by being cast again into the furnace and refashioned.”

“any great transformation of our environment.” Sully, 160 (footnote #134).

“As trust in oneself and in the outer world develop together.” The quotation is from Helen Merrell Lynd’s On Shame and the Search for Identity (Routledge, 1999), 46. I came across it in the psychologist Martin Rokeach’s The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Psychological Study (Vintage Books, 1964), 22. Rokeach’s book is a fascinating extended meditation on the nature of belief, framed by an account of his work with three men in a psychiatric institution in Ypsilanti, Michigan, all of whom believe themselves to be Jesus. I am grateful to Howard Katz for suggesting that I read it.

Forcing function. I learned about forcing function (and borrowed the example of the key in the lock) from Donald A. Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things (Basic Books, 2002), see esp. pp. 131–138.

“The jeering of nonbelievers.” Festinger, 5.

CHAPTER 10 HOW WRONG?

The story of William Miller and the Millerites comes from his own Apology and Defense (J. V. Himes, publisher, 1845); from Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler, eds., The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (The University of Tennessee Press, 1993); and from Everett N. Dick, William Miller and the Advent Crisis (Andrews University Press, 1994). All quotes from Miller are from his Apology. Luther Boutelle’s and Hiram Edson’s personal accounts of the Great Disappointment are included in the index to The Disappointed. Enoch Jacobs’s quotation comes from Lawrence Foster’s contribution to The Disappointed, “Had Prophecy Failed?”, 181. Other, specific citations are below.

Philip Tetlock’s work in Expert Political Judgment was particularly helpful in shaping my discussion of the “Wrong, Buts.”

an explosion of competing hypotheses. See Kuhn, especially Chapter Eight, “The Response to Crisis,” 77–91.

Christ really had returned to earth—by entering the hearts of his followers. See especially Foster, “Had Prophecy Failed?” Here is Enoch Jacobs on the subject (p. 182): “We thought the fault was all without—sad mistake!! It was within. This out of doors salvation has always been a precarious thing.”

“the error correction [process].” Norman, 112. The Israeli social scientist Zvi Lanir calls this tendency to minimize our mistakes “the fundamental surprise error.” Lanir illustrates the difference between superficial and fundamental surprise with a tale (possibly apocryphal but at any event amusing) from the life of Noah Webster, he of dictionary-writing fame. The story goes that Webster came home one day to find his wife in flagrante delicto with his butler. “You surprised me,” blurted out the flustered