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Comment by Freedom2 | Hacker News Reader

For me, this is why I hesitate to comment and write significant, lengthy comments on here, or any website. It's easy to be wrong (like you), and while being wrong isn't bad, there isn't necessarily any upside to being right either, aside from the dopamine rush of getting upvotes, which in life, doesn't amount to much.

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What's wrong with being wrong? In this case, I'm delighted to be wrong (though I believe I had evaluated OpenAI mostly right given my knowledge at the time).

Owning up to the "wrong" is good in my book

That's just some weird moral compass.

It's almost totally irrelevant if people own up to bring wrong, particularly about predictions.

I can't think of a benefit, really. You can learn from mistakes without owning up to them, and I think that's the best use of mistakes.

It's absolutely not weird. Saying "I was wrong" is a signal that you can change your mind when given new evidence. If you don't signal this to other people, they will be really confused by your very contradictory opinions.

I own up because it helps me grow personally and professionally, and if I’m not growing, what am I even doing?

No, it’s not. Being willing to admit you were wrong is foundational if you ever plan on building on ideas. This was a galaxy brained take if I’ve ever seen one.

I think this is a terrible take. It is so intensely important that one can admit they were wrong when new information comes to light.

Privately, sure. I don't think admitting it out loud makes better people.

The opposite of that is sticking to your statements which is stubborn and foolhardy. Owning up to it is courageous.

Which actually lends me to respect politicians who do that, and instead ridicule people who post old videos of Joe Biden or Obama or Hillary Clinton mandating heterosexual couples. A virtuous person is also open to adapting their convictions continually based on present day evidence and arguments - what is science otherwise?

You mean the "full accountability" in recent mass layoff notices ? =/

I rather disagree!

Writing and discussion are great ways to explore topics and crystallize opinions and knowledge. HN is a pretty friendly place to talk over these earth moving developments in our field and if I participate here, I’ll be more ready to participate when I get asked if we need to spin up an LLM project at work.

As long as your opinions/predictions are backed by well-reasoned arguments, you shouldn't be afraid to share them just because they might turn out to be wrong. You can learn a lot by having your arguments rebutted, and in the end no one really cares one way or the other.

Just don't end up like that guy who predicted that Dropbox would never make it off the ground... that was not a well-reasoned position.

Though there might be nothing beneficial about being right or getting upvotes, and it is easy to be wrong, an important thing on a forum like this is the spread of new ideas. While someone might be hesitant to share something because it's half-baked, they might have the start to an idea that could have some discussion value.

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