THE BRAIN & HUMAN PERFORMANCE
1 + 1 Is Never 2
A chemistry lesson from her brother. A philosophy degree in a burgundy frock coat. And a fall off a stage during Nobel Week. Dr. Mouna Esmaeilzadeh on why certainty is the enemy of intelligence — and why the smartest people she knows are the ones who never stop doubting.
My brother Saeid has taught me many things in life. Among them, that one plus one is never two. The first time I heard it, I flinched. Because if there is one thing we know for certain, surely it is that 1 + 1 = 2.
"Only in the world of mathematics," my brother replied. "A carbon atom and an oxygen atom are combined. That is two atoms. But suddenly something entirely new has been created — carbon monoxide, a toxic gas. In reality, one plus one is never two. It is two plus something more. And that something more is the only interesting part."
It applies every time two things meet. Two people. Two scientific fields. Two opposing ideas that collide — where a thesis and an antithesis open the door to a synthesis.
Another thing Saeid often says is: "I am always wrong."
Think about it. Newton — who at the age of twenty-three, during the plague quarantine, discovered calculus, gravity, and the nature of light, and who laid the foundation for all modern physics — that Newton was wrong. We did not know it until Einstein came along. "If the genius Newton was wrong," Saeid likes to say, "then who the hell am I not to be?"
Twenty-four hundred years before he said it, Socrates expressed the same idea: "True knowledge is knowing that you know nothing." He was called the wisest man in Athens — not despite confessing his ignorance, but because of it.
The philosopher in the burgundy coat
Before I became a doctor and neuroscientist, I studied philosophy up to a master's degree. In Oslo. I walked around in a burgundy eighteenth-century frock coat, a pocket watch in my waistcoat, a pipe in my hand, feeling profoundly intellectual. I believed that intellectualism was about knowing things.
After all these years of philosophy, of studying the brain, of trying to understand the world and the future, I have arrived at a single truth: our curiosity and our willingness to question are all we have. They are the only things that have ever moved us forward. And they are — apart from emotion and empathy — the only things the machines lack.
Bertrand Russell said it best in the 1930s: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
The art of falling
Speaking of being wrong. Some mistakes are more visible than others. Like the time I miscalculated where the stage ended and fell off it. During Nobel Week, invited by the Swedish business icon Anders Wall to give a lecture, in front of a packed auditorium.
But that is not my most serious fall.
I am an optimist. I often say that the future is better than you think. But for a long time, I believed that progress was linear. That the world simply gets better and better, like a steady upward curve. Today, I know it moves in waves. It moves forward, yes. But also cyclically. Because humans grow comfortable. Things get a little too good. We forget what it cost and what sacrifices were made for us to have it this good — and then history repeats itself.
That is where we are now.
The machines that never say "I don't know"
We have built machines that never say "I do not know." ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok. They hallucinate answers with the same conviction with which they answer 2 + 2. We mistake this for intelligence. It is the opposite.
And we reward the same behaviour in humans. The person who hesitates loses the board meeting. The person who is confidently wrong wins the election.
Socrates sat in Athens and asked questions. Russell sat in Cambridge and doubted. I sat in Oslo in a burgundy coat and thought I was wise. It took me twenty years to understand that wisdom is to keep asking.
My brother Saeid is a genius. Not despite the fact that he says "I am always wrong." Because of it.
— Mouna