The Value of realizing we're always wrong | Hacker News Reader

The Value of realizing we're always wrong

4 pointsSMAAART6 comments

You know how it happens: we want to achieve something (intent) so we put a few actions into place, according to our plans of cause -> effect.

But reality is the ultimate feedback mechanism, and things don't work out as intended. #Failure.

And then, we start looking for ways on how it's not our fault, whose fault it was, mitigating circumstances... you know the drill.

But, what if the post-mortem staring point were: I was wrong, 100% wrong!

I am not talking about playing the victim, quite the opposite: playing the main actor, who.. well, failed. And chances are the root causes of the failures are the worldviews and the habits that drove the reasoning of cause -> effect and therefore the actions.

And if we look at the actions as software, the habits and worldviews are the equivalent of the Operating System.

Starting with the presupposition that we are 100% wrong allows us to re-writhe the OS, and then, in the future, make better cause->effect evaluations and therefore put into motion better actions.

I've been doing this exercise for a few months now, and - after the initial show - it's quite eye opening and good personal development tool.

What does HN think?

P.S.: Along the same lines, we need to stop sugar coating the word "Failure" and just embrace it for what it is. A failure. And failure are necessary steps on the way to greater means; failures are not terminal, that's death. Death is terminal, and it's not a failure is, life.

I find this mindset helpful when working with teams as well.

An example of this is when playing team games, such as Dota, League, Valorant, etc. When you lose, it is very natural to point at every mistake your teammates made and say "If y'all didn't make these mistakes, we would have won". Which often is true, and why people have not stopped blaming each other. However, these people fail to realize that, if only they themselves made less mistakes, they also could have won. The blame is shared. Once a player adopts the mindset of "How can I change what I did to secure a win?" they can actually get better. They need to start focusing on what they have control over.

I think this mindset can be broadened to the workplace or APIs, anything that involves another person's work.

Hi there. Interesting comment.

I have not tried this in a tram setting, but I can see how, with the right team, it could be valuable, more about fixing the issues than assigning blame.

There is no point in placing blame on a part of system that is not under your direct control, because you have no ability to make that part to behave in some other way so the outcome would be different next time. No point to blame gravity for your fall from the cliff, gravity will be unmoved by it and next time gravity will do exactly the same: it will pull your down and smash against rocks.

It is not my own idea, I read it from Yudkowski, but I cannot find it on lesswrong.com to give you a direct link. DDG finds nothing on LW, and lesswrong.com now is drowned in third-party scripts and it's own search doesn't work for me. So I reproduced it by memory.

But I'm not quite agree with Yudkowski. Gravity is a very real cause of some effects, so nothing wrong to hold it responsible for it's actions. The mistake we might make is to stop after blaming it. Just stop believing that the finding a scapegoat removes a responsibility from you. Somehow we tend to believe that cause is something very real and objective, that any effect has one cause, but it is not. Cause is a mental construct, it is very fuzzy. For any effect Y we can find dozens of causes in a sense "if there was no cause X, then there would be no effect Y". And our task is not to find just any X and forget about it, our task to find such an X that we can wriggle and to change outcome.

It doesn't mean that you (and Yudkiwski) are not right, it is just another perspective leading to (mostly) the same outcomes. But when you think about social problems (or maybe more general: about really complex systems?) it is not enough to find one good cause X, you need to find as many as you can, and deal with all of them at once. You need explicitly search for all the ways to change the outcome, never allowing yourself a luxury of placing blame on something/someone and stopping there.

There is one good reason to place blame: when you are dealing with people, "blame" is a well understood construct by everyone allowing a group to inform some member that avoiding some outcomes is his responsibility. It doesn't just inform about it, it reminds all others about what comes with a failure to be responsible. When you deal with a system made of objects (not subjects) then blame has no value at all, you need to work with causes. And yeah, in this case you are the only subject in the system, so if you pulled blame into the picture, then you and only you would be responsible for everything.

WOW! Thank you for taking the time to write this comment.

I hear you about Gravity, and just like Gravity my automatic habits and Modus Operandi cause most of the outcomes that are not aligned with my original intentions. But unlike Gravity there is something that I can do to change my own thinking, worldviews, reactions, habits, Modus Operandi; and that is where I am focusing my efforts these days, and why I posted this query.

Your comment gave me some food for though.

I wonder if you are grappling with your lack of "success" in a particular area?

My understanding is ancient, not post-modern. We work hard, enjoy what we have and our grateful for what we have. I do not overly concern myself with other's success. This frees me from a starting point of success/failure.

Hello there. Thank you for the comment.

> I wonder if you are grappling with your lack of "success" in a particular area?

Good question. Mainly I am having a problem with my lack of success in my professional life, and here's the conundrum:

1. Objectively speaking I have come a long way from where I started, most people would say that I am living the American dream.

2. On the other hand while I have achieved "enough" professionally as an employee (education + working for other people), I am not satisfied with my entrepreneurial endeavors. I had 1 win when I was very young (~18 yo) and then nothing ever since, only failures, and I attribute these failures to my own fears that stem from my won Anxiety. To put it simply, I am my own enemy.

Continuing #2 above, it is pervasive in many aspects of my life:

- I start things but I don't finish them

- I have no grit, I give up too soon

- I'm overly concern with what people think/would thing. At the same time I know that it's just BS, people DGAF, but still I can't help with those automatic behaviors and thinking.

I could go on, but I will stop here for now.

> My understanding is ancient, not post-modern. We work hard, enjoy what we have and our grateful for what we have. I do not overly concern myself with other's success. This frees me from a starting point of success/failure.

Good comment. Thank you.

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