full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong

Unscramble the Blue Letters


1,200 years before Descartes said his famous thing about "I think therefore I am," this guy, St. Augustine, sat down and wrote "Fallor ergo sum" — "I err therefore I am." Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it's not some kind of embarrassing dceeft in the hmuan styesm, something we can eradicate or overcome. It's tlaolty fundamental to who we are. Because, unlike God, we don't really know what's going on out there. And unlike all of the other animals, we are obsessed with trying to figure it out. To me, this ossoiesbn is the source and root of all of our productivity and creativity.

Open Cloze


1,200 years before Descartes said his famous thing about "I think therefore I am," this guy, St. Augustine, sat down and wrote "Fallor ergo sum" — "I err therefore I am." Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it's not some kind of embarrassing ______ in the _____ ______, something we can eradicate or overcome. It's _______ fundamental to who we are. Because, unlike God, we don't really know what's going on out there. And unlike all of the other animals, we are obsessed with trying to figure it out. To me, this _________ is the source and root of all of our productivity and creativity.

Solution


  1. system
  2. obsession
  3. human
  4. defect
  5. totally

Original Text


1,200 years before Descartes said his famous thing about "I think therefore I am," this guy, St. Augustine, sat down and wrote "Fallor ergo sum" — "I err therefore I am." Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it's not some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system, something we can eradicate or overcome. It's totally fundamental to who we are. Because, unlike God, we don't really know what's going on out there. And unlike all of the other animals, we are obsessed with trying to figure it out. To me, this obsession is the source and root of all of our productivity and creativity.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
chinese character 4
avoid thinking 2
present tense 2
stuff wrong 2
beth israel 2
wrong side 2
correct side 2


Important Words


  1. animals
  2. augustine
  3. capacity
  4. creativity
  5. defect
  6. descartes
  7. embarrassing
  8. eradicate
  9. ergo
  10. err
  11. famous
  12. figure
  13. fundamental
  14. god
  15. guy
  16. human
  17. kind
  18. obsessed
  19. obsession
  20. overcome
  21. productivity
  22. root
  23. sat
  24. screw
  25. source
  26. st
  27. system
  28. totally
  29. understood
  30. wrote
  31. years