Why You Can't Admit Personal Mistakes on the Internet

I think this is a pretty drastic way to interpret Rocketr's blog post and the subsequent HN thread. Something I've been trying to tell myself for years is write that post, because even if I'm wrong, I can always trust the internet to correct me. Whether that response is friendly or not is entirely up in the air, but it is up to me to field it and respond accordingly.

The problem isn't with admitting personal mistakes, the issue is the trend of writing a blog post with a message that's trying to tell the reader what to do or what not to do in a scenario that is entirely subjective or otherwise specific to a certain business model or team composition. This very entry is exactly that and to be honest, I'm a little worn of these types of posts; they're either depressing, narrow-minded or just straight-up finger-wagging for the sake of pageviews.

When we tell people not to try, we're keeping them from failing. When we tell people to keep to themselves, we create a society of bottled feelings and paranoia where we're constantly looking over our shoulders while talking behind people's backs.

What Andrew got out of writing that post was community feedback about what else he could or should have done as well as another response from PG. What the community got out of that post is invaluable, even to someone like me that has zero plans to make a pitch anytime soon.

At the end of the day, no one should hinder their natural inclinations to be social and curious or honest for the sake of learning out of fear of looking like an ass, and the internet as a whole needs to do a better job in embracing that mentality and responding appropriately so that we can all just live and learn.

Or: "How to appear strong when you are weak." There's a word for people who never admit to a mistake: liars.