Education instead of Delusion: Together we become smarter

"That's too difficult for me, I need help" – this is a feeling we should not shy away from. On the contrary – it is something beautiful. We should actively strive for it.

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Albert Einstein was desperate. For years, he had been searching for the grand, compre-hensive theory of gravitation. He had already tried several approaches, but the mathemat-ics he needed for his calculations was too difficult. He simply couldn't manage it. "You must help me, or I'll go mad!" he wrote to his friend Marcel Grossmann. And indeed, Grossmann helped. Einstein learned how to mathematically handle strange, warped di-mensions of space – and thus, in 1915, the greatest work of his life, the General Theory of Relativity, was born.

Einstein had already been one of the most famous physicists in the world. For years, he had been regarded as a brilliant scientist, a pioneering thinker, and an authoritative expert. No one would have blamed him if he had thought in self-satisfied arrogance: "If I don't un-derstand it, then no one does!"

He could have simply abandoned the complicated work on the theory of relativity to enjoy the rest of his life basking in the glory his other works had already brought him. But he didn't.

Albert Einstein was not afraid of the feeling of being unable to solve a task. On the contra-ry: he deliberately brought about this feeling of being overwhelmed. He stubbornly tackled the very task that felt far too difficult. And he was not too proud to admit his overwhelm and seek help from someone who was better at this point than he was.

Only through this did Einstein finally achieve the greatest triumph of his life – the General Theory of Relativity, which remains the best theory of gravitation we have today. His for-mulas have proven themselves in countless experiments; they are also an indispensable basis for our modern global positioning systems. Only because Einstein was able to con-structively deal with feeling stupid, he is still considered one of the smartest people in world history.

There can be many reasons for not knowing something or having false ideas in our heads. Perhaps someone has given us incomplete or incorrect information. Perhaps we have fallen into the trap of a sensory illusion. Perhaps we believe something simply be-cause we want to believe it, not because we have good arguments for it. Psychological research has found countless mechanisms by which we deceive ourselves and get en-tangled in foolish thinking errors.

No matter how smart we are and how educated we are – we all have firm beliefs that simply do not correspond to reality. This is in the nature of humans. It is also nothing to be ashamed of. But we only achieve real educational progress if we first learn to see and acknowledge our own limits. Only then can we overcome these limits.

Unfortunately, the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction: it is popular to present oneself as an infallible star, to cover up one's weaknesses, and simply to claim that one already knows everything.

This is not entirely bad – self-confidence and daring are useful qualities. But with some famous billionaires and superstars, we also see: if you overdo it, it becomes dangerous.

One must also – just like Albert Einstein – have the ability to correctly assess one's own abilities. Only if you understand where you still need to learn can you become smarter. In education, we need courage and confidence – but sometimes also a bit of humility.

Short Biography of Florian Aigner Florian Aigner is a physicist and science journalist. He studied physics at the Technical University of Vienna, where he received his doctorate in theoretical quantum physics in 2010. Today, he works as a journalist on many different science communication projects, writes a science column for futurezone/Kurier, produces a radio column for the station Ö1, and much more. Aigner has written three popular sci-ence books so far, his book "Warum wir nicht durch Wände gehen*" was named "Knowledge Book of the Year 2023."