Love for the Truth
”I am going to learn everything about everything!” I proclaimed as a child. ”That is not possible,” my teacher replied. Growing up, adults often complimented me on being intelligent. Being smart was not just a description; it became my identity and proof that I had value to the world. For the longest time, I was competing with everybody around me. Being caught not knowing something felt like the ultimate embarrassment. Loving the truth, for me, turned out to be wanting the truth more than wanting to be right.
Rhetoric uses language to win the room and protect what you already believe. Love for the truth asks a much scarier question: what if the person who disagrees with me is right?
Erik Thor, Why I Love
The Trap of Intellectual Pride
Forty-two digits of pi
When a classmate proudly told me he had memorized thirty digits of pi, I spent the next afternoon memorizing forty-two digits just to show him up. When I told him, he blocked me. He was right to be upset; I had not cared about pi at all, only about proving how smart I was. Deciding that I would be superior to other people keeps me from growing, and it hides something I have since come to believe: a mistake can show me the truth just as well as being right can.
The meeting about the integration
One day I had a meeting with the manager of engineering to lay out my plan for a new integration. He cut me off in front of the entire group and said my plan would never work. At first I got defensive. Then I noticed my shoulders creeping up toward my ears and my jaw clenching. Right in the middle of my sentence, I shut my mouth, took a breath, and asked myself: Wait. Is he right? The success of the project mattered more to me than being right in that meeting room.
The Day I Said Personality Types Weren’t Real
I had studied personality types for more than a decade. I built frameworks around them. I made hundreds of videos about them. It was the thing I was known for.
When I first started speaking publicly and making videos about the sixteen personality types, my mind wasn’t looking for the truth; it was looking for ammunition. When I sat down at my computer to do research, I typed biased searches straight into Google: ”Proof that personality types exist.” I called it research, but it was really just confirmation bias with a bibliography.
Eventually, the evidence was clearer than my attachment to the subject. After building my entire channel, my income, and my reputation on personality types, I turned on my camera, looked into the lens, and told hundreds of thousands of subscribers that personality types weren’t real.
That was the moment I was wrong about something that mattered and said so out loud, in front of the audience I had built by being right about it. Realizing how many times I had been wrong is what freed me from my ego. Admitting I was wrong was the antidote to pride. When I finally retired from being the smartest person in the room, the relief was immediate. I could ask dumb questions without shame, enjoy being a beginner, and let reality surprise me.
”I couldn’t kid myself anymore. I couldn’t pretend that I was somehow smarter than other people, or that I had more figured out than they did. There was no posturing left, and no mask left. Admitting I was wrong was the antidote to pride.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For The Truth Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Reflection & Practice
Truth Over Being Right
Where has the desire to appear knowledgeable or competent kept you from admitting you do not know something? What would it look like to cultivate the quiet joy of being a beginner today?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Practices of Love Test
See how your love for the truth balances with your care for people, your work, and your future across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book Why I Love
Read Chapter 6 of Why I Love on intellectual pride, confirmation bias, and the joy of being small.
Loading discussion…