An error is something you notice you make while trying to get good at something. It’s a mistake. An error is something bad if you leave it alone. It’s something good that let’s you finish a goal if you fix it. I also think an error is a sign that something is going wrong. Like, just cuz it leads to a goal failing doesn’t make it a cause…idk about this.
An error is something that can happen frequently to infrequently. If you’re really good at something like catching a ball then you won’t miss the ball most of the time. You won’t mess up catching the ball almost all the time. If something is really hard, like throwing a ball at a precise location then you’re gonna keep making mistakes. They’re going to happen frequently. If the location is very precise then you’re never going to throw it at the right spot.
I think there’s a reason about asking what is an error and its definition. I think that may help answer my original question or phrase it better. If you know what an error is then it helps you understand the following:
An error wouldn’t be an error if it didn’t cause failure at a goal you have. Like, if you didn’t have a goal and an error causes it to fail then that’s not an error for you. You can choose a goal that doesn’t fail due to an error.
If the errors are yours then if you don’t fix them they’ll keep causing failures at goals you have. If those errors were fixed then they wouldn’t cause failure at goals you have. That’s why they’re your errors.
Can I explain this to a friend? How would I do that? I think I would talk about a relatable example, like something they already do so they can understand.
If my friend worked in fast food I would tell them this: So an error is when you make a mistake. Like, you forget to start the fryer with the food inside or you give the customer the wrong drinks. What the article is saying that if you don’t fix these kinds of errors you make then you’re going to keep making them. You’re going to keep forgetting to do stuff or you’re going to keep reading the directions wrong. Your goals are to read stuff correctly not just give the correct drinks to the customer.
Ohh I didnt think about the goal of truth. Can you make a goal about the truth of quantum physics or math?
I think ill find stuff about the goal of truth if I lookup definitions of error. I wanna do that. I saw a Merriam Webster definition that said this:
: an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy
I think your goal in the definition could be the truth. And if you don’t get that truth then you’re failing at that goal.
What’s “that”? Knowing the definition of error? That and knowing that errors can lead to failure at a goal of truth? I think I might be making an error here. Like, english or something set-related.
I think I see how errors leading to goals failing answers the question. I don’t think they would even be errors if there was no failure at goals. What’s the question?
“those errors” are the errors you didn’t fix seriously and so you keep making them. Why do those errors cause failure at goals you have? I think you already have those goals so those errors you make will stay as errors and make your goals fail.
I think if you keep making errors that’s going to lead to a goal failing…I don’t think I see how it answers the question.
I know the answer to the question is not a yes or no question. I think the answer has to do with the nature of errors. Errors lead to goals failing. There’s a reason there that answers the question. The question is a why question so it’s asking a reason something happens. I know you have goals that are failing and there’s errors that you keep making cuz you didn’t fix them seriously. I think if you make errors you’re failing at goals. I don’t think someone who makes an error is failing at a goal you have. Like, if you have the goal of shooting a target and someone else misses that’s their goal that they failed not yours. If you make that error then you’re failing at a goal you have.
I like that this paragraph is about social dynamics. I wanna learn more about them and how errors work there. Besides learning how others are treated, I wanna know how I treat others based on errors they make. Also, I know there’s some kind of social dynamics happening with friends when making mistakes.
First sentence:
What is mainstream culture? I kind of know intuitively what that is. Like, it’s what’s popular I think. Like, the main way people see things. Idk I’ll look it up…I looked up mainstream culture as a term and as separate terms. Mainstream seems to be what’s prevalent like what’s most popular. Culture is a set of ideas, beliefs and other things a group of people have. I know there’s sub-cultures which are looked down on sometimes. I think they’re looked down cuz they do some things worse than mainstream culture.
Mainstream culture must include a lot of people. At least a lot of people in the western world or the US. So I think the quote means that a lot of people are pretty hostile to errors. Maybe not all of one person is hostile to ideas but they have views which express that hostility.
Also what does “pretty hostile” mean? Like, you’re against something? “pretty” is an adjective so you’re really against something. I’m going to look up what hostile means…Wait, I don’t think “pretty” is an adjective. I think it may be an adverb…I found a Merriam Webster definition that doesn’t sound too wrong:
openly opposed or resisting
To me it would make sense if mainstream culture opposes mistakes. Like, they’re a bad thing.
I think I’ve seen this. It’s hard to recall times people make mistakes and it’s seen as weak and bad. I know people make mistakes like dropping stuff in public or a professor making a mistake on the board. The professors are seen as dumb I think.
What is “weak and bad”? Like, you’re less then? Or you’re doing a bad job? How do people see stuff socially? Like in a matter of strength? What’s good or bad for mainstream culture? I don’t think I know a lot of this stuff. I’m bad at social dynamics; it’s hard to pick up what people mean in public.
I think stuff like showing confidence or not messing up your words shows strength. Like, it shows you got your stuff together and you should be treated better. It’d be nice to know what strength means and how people see that idea.
That’s interesting how there’s worse things socially. Like how is admitting your mistake extra weak and bad? Who’s making these rules? We are? Like people in society?
I think I get the quote above somewhat intuitively. I don’t think I could be all that explicit about it tho. Like, it’s hard to name examples of admitting to mistakes as weak and bad. I also don’t know why that’s seen in such a way.
Sometimes I think about someone admitting to their mistake as them being the bigger person. How often is it seen like that? Also, that sounds like admitting to a lie. That sounds different.
I think there’s a whole point to bringing up how mainstream culture views mistakes. Like there may be upsides to how they view it and downsides. I also don’t think mainstream culture is going to have very useful things to say about mistakes cuz there’s barely anything about it. Like, there’s no literature about how to handle mistakes like CF does it. It’s a whole thing they avoid doing. Just cuz we don’t get it we try to act like it’s not there. That when the very thing that could be holding one back is not having knowledge about errors.
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff that seems so intuitive but hard to talk about. Like, I think people would hide their own errors cuz if you talk about them you could look dumb in front of everybody. Admissions don’t look so good to do in public even tho discussion about it can help fix the mistake. That’s a big contrast.
Making mistake can have a lot of negative value in society, but that’s what lets you see that you didn’t succeed at a goal. If you didn’t make mistakes then you wouldn’t be able to improve. If you keep doing easy things then you’re gonna keep doing unambitious goals and not grow.
What if people take admissions being bad literally? Then they would never want to admit to a mistake. They would think it’s a bad thing and not do stuff that leads to growth. That could’ve been a tool to help succeed at goals.
Those attitudes look irrational. I forget what irrational means. I think that has to do with stuff that doesn’t make sense? I think rational means stuff that has to do with reason. Like, if you reason well then you can create knowledge. I think something that’s irrational would stop knowledge creation, like it would limit it a lot. Imagine if you couldn’t talk about your mistakes ever? You wouldn’t even be able to fix them. It would be hard to even learn about them. Only people who are really smart would understand them well and do something about it. What about those that struggle doing rationality stuff? It’s going to be hard for them
Is that admitting being sometimes ok part of the attitude of rationality groups? They view that admitting to mistakes is sometimes ok? That actually seems like the product of their attitude towards errors. Like, cuz they have a better attitude towards errors, admitting to mistakes is sometimes ok. Also, I see that it’s done on average. Some places might be worse or better.
I see that you can still get punished in rationality-oriented groups. Like, it’s not as much I think as mainstream culture but it still happens. That sounds good, cuz you won’t be seen as less all that often for making mistakes and admitting to them.
Oh, I think I read the quote above in two different ways. I thought cuz there’s bad stuff associated with social dynamics, that the sentence said that there’s not as many people coming ahead socially for putting others down that concede to errors.
I think the correct interpretation is that sometimes you’re praised for admitting to errors. Also, people that concede to errors come ahead socially. That’s like I think putting others down to come ahead socially. Like, you can do something good and come ahead socially rather than doing something that seems bad. I wonder what the interpretation is of those that concede to errors. Like, is it related to merit?
That ideal sounds good cuz you don’t have to be so attached to a wrong idea. I think there’s benefits to that view cuz what if you have an idea that’s really holding you back. You can find out that it’s wrong and not have to suffer the drawbacks in accepting it. I was thinking tho there’s reasons why we accept an idea and sometimes it’s not all that easy for an idea to die in our place?
Also, talking about the ideal is different than practicing it. From what I’ve seen a lot of people that talk about Popper don’t understand him. Like, they have wrong interpretations of his ideas and can do things contradictory to what he said. Also, I’ve seen that they may believe in his ideas that aren’t as good as his rationality stuff.
How do you not be too attached to your ideas? What does it mean to be too attached? I think that has to do with accepting fallibility. Like, sometimes I’m unsure about something that I don’t want to place too much value on it in case it’s wrong.
Are you too attached if you’re feeling personally threatened about an idea being wrong? Is that a sign that you’re too attached? I think it would be good to know what personally threatened means and what being too attached looks like. Personally threatened sounds like a part of you is in danger. Cuz an idea of yours is wrong that’s a risk to you. How does it come to that situation?
Yeah, I don’t think ideas equal your core self. What is your core self btw? Is that made of ideas too? What does it mean to reject an idea? I can think of an example. Let’s say you had an idea about how to do a math formula. That was your idea, but because you found out there was a mistake in it, you end up correcting it. Is that rejecting your core self? The idea seems like a part of you in a way, but you don’t have too much personal attachment to it so you change it. You just want to get the problem right I think.
Focusing on believing youre already right on other issues sounds like dying in the place of your ideas. Like, what if there’s a mistaken premise but you keep concluding it? It’s going to be hard to truth seek using bad premises. This reminds me of the problem of induction where knowledge creation is thought to be done in one way when it’s in fact done through evolution.
I like the idea of focusing on being good at error correction cuz you can focus on being right. That’s different than supporting your ideas to be true. You’re focusing on being rational and finding the truth. You don’t have to be beholden by one idea for so long. I think of being mistaken as a starting point to be correct. Like, you gotta build up to have proper knowledge.
I wonder how correct these ideals are and the upsides and downsides. How often are they followed by Karl Popper fans vs. Popper himself? I think if this stuff was followed more then it’d be easier to learn and practice rationality on the internet. My question is why aren’t other communities more involved with CF? Those ideals sound perfect to help one interact with CF ideas.
I see that there’s attitudes that push back against those mainstream views about mistakes. That doesn’t mean they do things related to postmortems. Like, they don’t encourage them. The attitudes don’t talk about facts about postmortems. That there’s undelrying patterns to mistakes. That and there’s data points about them and that we should fix underlying mistakes.
I think that’s correct cuz I’ve watched some rationality stuff from DD and Sam Harris. I didn’t really know about postmortems being important to rationality. Even when I visited FI and CF groups, I didn’t see postmortems practiced much. Like, the attitudes from other rationality groups were not enough to show that postmortems are important. That’s if it’s reached people there.
I know FI and CF encourage postmortems, but it seems like such a hard concept to get. There’s not much stuff online to learn from that tells you mistakes and their underlying causes are important to learn about. I’m so used to avoiding mistakes and not wanting to deal with them that postmortems is like a foreign concept to me.
Those attitudes are the ones discussed in the previous paragraph. They were attitudes about ideas dying in your place and focusing on correcting errors I think. Those are accomplishing the goal of pushing back against mainstream views about mistakes.
That mainstream hostility to mistakes is the stuff about being weak and bad for admitting to mistakes. They’re hostile about making mistakes. That hostility is irrational and anti-fallibilist. If it was some other kind of hostility then it wouldn’t be subject of this article I think. That hostility makes it seem that we have to be right in order to be strong and good in society. It’s like making mistakes is really bad for you and it makes one think that making no mistakes is the goal. It’s like making no mistakes is the expectation to life.
This is saying that the attitudes have a shortcoming. The attitudes don’t say what to do with the mistakes. They don’t talk about doing something practical with them. Like, yes it’s good to not be so hostile about mistakes but what about dealing with them? The attitudes aren’t sufficient enough to encourage using current knowledge about a problem.
Yeah, I don’t think the attitudes say that stuff about mistakes. Maybe, they talk about dealing with the ideas themselves and not making it too much about yourself. Like, don’t take ideas to personally so you can be correct about them. None of that stuff talks about the facts of mistake making tho. Like, saying that many mistakes are cause by underlying ones. If I was someone who only knew about the attitudes I’d be wondering about how to correct my mistakes. Like, what’s a good way to do it. There’s all this talk about not dying in the place of ideas, but how do you work on these bad ideas?
I think I always had questions lingering in my head when I believed those attitudes. It seems like a good attitude to have but how do you actually work on being smart? What steps could you take to have ideas die in your place? Ok, our ideas can be wrong, but how does that work? Why are we wrong about things?
What is dealing with criticism? Can you make your own criticisms too? Like, about yourself? If yeah I think dealing with criticisms is doing something to the plan to achieve a goal I think. I see that the quote describes a way one can deal with criticism. You can deal with a criticism by wanting to close the issue and moving on fast. How does that look like?
Wanting to close the issue seems different than learning about the issue and understanding it. Closing the issue is like choosing to have a limited view of it so you can move on. What does closing mean? I looked at Merriam Webster and found a definition that sounds kind of right:
: to bring to an end or period
If you did that with an issue then you would try to make it so the issue doesn’t bother you in a specific case. Like, you make a quick fix so you can move on with completing your goal. An issue could be causing failure at a goal and you just try to make it so the issue doesn’t do that anymore. Idk about this
Here’s another definition:
: to conclude discussion or negotiation about
That definition sounds right to me too. You can talk about the issue more so you can learn about it. Instead of doing that you close the issue and end the discussion about it. That way you can move on to doing something else. This interpretation sounds right cuz a lot of times people don’t want to investigate why they make a mistake. They don’t want to look more into the issue.
There’s this hyphen part that describes closing an issue and moving on fast:
What is not being comfortable knowing about a mistake? That seems like not being ok with making mistakes. That’s something else tho I think. There’s an “and” so that’s two things at once. I think the quote is saying not being comfortable knowing about your mistake and not moving on to fixing it quickly. Like, usually people try to fix a mistake when they find about it right away. For me, I at least do that. I thought I know enough about the mistake whenever I make one so I just move on immediately to fixing it.
I thought the fact that I’m aware of the mistake means I know enough about it to fix it. Maybe that’s not the correct view to have about mistakes. I do feel discomfort about knowing about a mistake cuz I don’t want to not accomplish the goal and fail. That’ll show I’m not smart enough. I gotta fix the mistake now so I can be successful. I do feel the effects of this attitude cuz I feel like I still don’t accomplish much in general. Like, the reason why a mistake happens doesn’t just end after fixing it in that one case. I think I notice similar kinds of mistakes whenever I take on a similar project to the last.
Here’s the last part of the sentence:
Doesn’t criticism say why an idea fails at a goal? That’s a form of discussion I think. If you just close the issue and try to move on then you’re not continuing that discussion. You could learn more about an issue and actually fix a mistake. But instead the discussion gets shut down and you don’t learn enough to make progress.
What is this? The word “some” makes me think it’s something not specific. Like, it’s there but we don’t yet what that hostility is. It’s similar to saying there’s some people that like a music artist. We don’t know about the exact number but we know it’s at least 1.
How do you conclude there’s some hostility to criticism? I don’t know how but it seems cuz you treat criticism a certain way, there’s a conflict or error going on there. You at least agree that something is causing failure at a goal, but you’re opposed to other things that criticism brings up. You don’t like it brings up a topic you think is irrelevant. Idk
I want to fix the mistakes I see immediately cuz i think that’s improvement and I can make progress. Is there a difference between improving your errors as you write and doing postmortems? I thought fixing a mistake immediately meant that Im improving and making progress. I’m thinking about stuff said in the How I Write a Lot article. I forgot exactly what was said. I know if I make a mistake about using “etc.” incorrectly I could look that up to do it right almost every time later. Is that different than making a mistake with an underlying cause?
I do get the feeling sometimes that when I make a fix to my writing that it’s not completely resolved. Something tells me I might revisit the issue in the future cuz i dont understand it all yet.
I for sure see some imperfections in my writing. I’m starting to get more of an idea about the writing errors I make. I think the more I understand my writing problems the more effective my solutions will be.
I also saw some stuff from How I Write a Lot about fixing deep root causes:
That’s from postmortems I think. How would you change those root cause ideas? By investigating errors. It’s more efficient to fix root causes than individual cases of errors. I think that’s if there is a root cause.
Here’s another quote from the article:
How does it work to make improvements with no organized attempt? I see that you can pick up on some problems; that’s how you can fix them. Is that related to postmortems? Is making improvements the same as making fixes? I think when you write you for sure can make improvements by using knowledge about writing. If you write something correctly then that’ll literally make improvements to your writing. Like, if you use references to refer to too many things, you can pick up on that problem and figure out how to not confuse the reader.
There’s this other part from the article that’s interesting:
I think you can say that it’s more effective to do postmortems for a post cuz you can work on fixing root cause of errors… Ohhh I see that it says it could be “more efficient”. That’s interesting cuz you could improve with less effort if you do something like a postmortem I think, but if it leads to procrastination or perfectionism then it might not be as effiecient. I think doing a post mortem is a structured attempt cuz you’re focusing on investigating errors and fixing them.
So if you manage to not slow down and do structured attempts to improve then that’s going to be really good. Writing a lot about stuff you find interesting still sounds useful tho. You don’t have to force structured attempts to improve. I think you for sure can find a place for them. That would help.
I think you shouldn’t find them too upsetting cuz if you know about investigating and fixing errors, it makes sense they’re good. I know you can’t move on fast if you investigate but are you really moving on from the issue if it’s still there? You can focus on something else, but how often do you keep messing stuff up? If it’s regularly and you think you’re not getting much done then it might be good to at least research postmortems.
Also, investigating sounds like a neutral thing to do. You’re not immediately jumping to conclusions about what you’re going to do. You’re learning more about the issue and your situation. I think the more you learn the better informed your decisions can be. I think you can make good fixes if you investigate enough.
What’s investigating like btw? I think I might have some experience with that, but I’m not too sure what it is. I think if I investigated stuff better then I would be learning more about my mistakes. I’ll look up the definition for that. There’s some stuff in my life I think would be good to investigate to make fixes for them
What are those unproductive, negative thoughts about? I know they keep us from productively investigating our mistakes for longer times. Do they happen when we try to investigate a mistake for a longer period of time? Like, a mistake may be taking so long to even fix that one sees that as a bad thing and wants to move on.
I see that we get caught up in those negative, unproductive thoughts. Like, realistically, you’ll still have those thoughts, but you get stuck thinking about them and don’t find a resolution. You start thinking that investigating is a waste of time and you believe that and try to move on. What about starting postmortems? I want to start doing them but I don’t know where to start, like what’s easy to start with. I know I started somewhere kind of easy before when I did a video game project. I didn’t make so many mistakes that it was easy to isolate the few of them and investigate. I think I learned way more about mistakes there than I have in other postmortems.
Also, when you’re investigating a mistake for longer periods of time, you’re not considering it fixed it yet. I think that’s from the quote below; you could be comfortable knowing about a mistake and investigating it: