Why Scientists Need to Fail Better

CK Dexter • 10 months ago Oh for crying out loud. If you want to interpret the meaning, READ THE WHOLE DAMN PASSAGE. Not one mention of the surrounding txt, not a single quote of Beckett's actual words beyond the familiar soundbite.

If you read the whole piece, or even just the whole paragraph, it's clear THERE ARE NO MORALES TO BE DRAWN, it is not normative but descriptive, it tells us not what we ought to do but what the entire natural order does and will do: fail, get sick, throw up, and die once and for all, never to rise again.

It's about the absolute and final fact of mortality, the ontological unreality of progress of any kind. The total cosmic triviality of change, not its celebration.

But hey, that's just one interpretation. It might be wrong, but AT LEAST I READ THE DAMN THING.

Here's the original context of the quote:

"Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still....

Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all...

All of old. Nothing else ever. But never so failed. Worse failed. With care never worse failed."