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Comment by ZephyrBlu | Hacker News Reader

Accepting and learning from mistakes means you must first admit you did something wrong.

It's hard to admit you did something wrong because of what it implies.

Am I stupid? Am I not as skilled as I think I am? Did I miss something? Perhaps all of the above?

I think this is hard for smart/perfectionist people because we think we should get things right, and this is likely to be tied to our ego/identity.

But I've come to the conclusion that humans are just fundamentally stupid, because even extremely intelligent people fuck things up all the time.

Not sure if it's the right thing to conclude from my observations, but it does make failure easier to deal with since I can remind myself that yep, I'm still just a dumb ape.

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A big dumb ape that can admit his mistakes is smarter than one that can’t.

I stopped having a problem with admitting my mistakes when I realized the power of it. It also had the effect of humanizing me to people who thought I was a robot because I could do something well.

Wiser rather than smarter, I think.

It can be powerful, but it can also be tiring. Especially if you keep making the same mistake(s) or you're under pressure.

Smarter in the long run, if you follow up with the learning part. Learning from your mistakes forms a feedback loop that improves your reasoning.

> even extremely intelligent people fuck things up all the time.

I think of the default condition being entropy and chaos and the exception to be whatever desirable order I was seeking. (It’s also the case that almost nothing I do except for relating to my family will really matter in 20 years’ time which helps [only slightly] me to rein in my perfectionism.)

“But I've come to the conclusion that humans are just fundamentally stupid”

I prefer eventually consistent but ok ;-).

This was my takeaway for a bit but I massaged it into “humans can make better decisions after mistakes”. The differentiator was the focus on getting better, because for me I think I have a proclivity to stew in the “we are all stupid; why try”. If you don’t have that problem then “we are all stupid” works too, and is true :-).

It's just a numbers game. We are not perfect, and nothing in the physical realm is perfect, even on electronic chips bits can be flipped by cosmic rays and lead to errors.

With every action or decision we take there's a non-zero probability it is a mistake. Over the course of our life we make a ton of decisions. The only thing you can do is reduce the error rate.

> But I've come to the conclusion that humans are just fundamentally stupid, because even extremely intelligent people fuck things up all the time.

This doesn't mean we're stupid, it just means we're doing complicated things.

Those who do not admit fail again and again. The worst thing is when people lie to themselves. Crafting alternative narratives and honestly pushing them. I have no explanation. One mistake is less than ten mistakes, no one trust liar. It is not smart.

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