I often wonder what things I’m wrong about. I sometimes notice wrong things said by friends and colleagues, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard. I’d have to imagine at least 10% of what’s in my head is wrong, and that’s likely an optimistic estimate, but after seeing a sufficiently large number of wrong things published in prestigious places in a given week, I’m apt to wonder how this can be. Over the past few millennia, mankind has invented science, turned rocks into refined metal, sand into semiconductors, created intelligence in those metals and semiconductors, and sent men to the moon. Yet so frequently we’re wrong, and at first it seems contradictory.

Some of the smartest minds in physics spent the better part of fifty years studying string theory as a possible theory of everything, a single set of equations and principles that can predict with mathematical precision everything that does, did, and can ever happen in our universe. Only after decades of finding flaws, inventing complex rules to resolve those flaws, and finding more flaws in a loop did the house of cards crumble in the past few years. Many physicists bet their lives on it; many still do. How can so many brilliant people be led astray for so long?

I think the problem is in the question. The more fact-minded among us have a particular dislike for wrong things, and subconsciously see a world where all the important decisions being made by all the right people means society can keep moving forward. First, this notion is probably elitist. But more importantly, it’s probably wrong.

After spending a few hours watching a machine learning model train on a second monitor while doing my work for the umpteenth time, I realized my sense that the important things have to be right disagreed with the evidence presented by this intelligence being created before me. The model doesn’t take every step in the direction of self-improvement. If you were to watch it navigating a map in parameter space, many of its steps would be aimed in no particularly intelligent direction at all.

It doesn’t need to be right. It only needs to be just slightly more right than it is wrong, and it’s mathematically guaranteed to eventually converge on the optimum. This isn’t a figure of speech, it’s mathematical certainty, far greater mathematical certainty than string theory will every be: if your level of rightness is just slightly larger than your level of wrongness, you’re guaranteed to make progress. Society doesn’t need a world full of right people getting it right almost all the time; the mathematics of progress are fortunately far more forgiving. You don’t even need 51%. But of course, the more right you are, the faster you’ll converge.