Not Even Wrong

Wow, I just found out what it means to be “Not even wrong”. The phase, coined by Wolfgang Pauli has just given me a huge slice of humble pie. Basically not even wrong is used to describe a totally failed conjecture. If something is meaningless, it’s definitely not right, but it’s not wrong either since you have to be coherent and pointed to be wrong. This has changed the way I think about wrong and right in science. Sometimes, as all scientists do, I use big words when I’m not exactly sure what I’m talking about to make it seem like I do. And the truth is, there’s no cookie and no medal for being hard to understand. From now on, if I’m unsure but I stil want to conjecture, I am going to do it with as basic of an explnation as possible. This way, if I’m misguided I’ll get caught fast instead of getting by on jibberish. This is the route to actually being right about a lot of things one day. Well, I hope that day comes, for now I’d rather be wrong than not even wrong.