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Let there be more biographies of failures

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Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#71

Post by carbonguy »

Judgmentality wrote: post #63
mdip wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure; but nobody who takes the 1000x risk does so believing they don't hold something that reduces that 1000x risk, either, whether deluded in that thinking or not. My Dad knew the statistics about his chances for success, and he had a very realistic picture (which turned out to be true) of what those statistics would look like when the variable being applied was "him". But the 1000x risk issue applies in some ways.…

> Maybe the HN crowd has different problems in this area than the world-at-large, but "an unrealistic expectation of success in business" is not common among grown-ups. Have you never met someone who opened a restaurant? Peter Thiel actually uses this as a talking point. The surest way to lose money is to open a restaurant, and yet there are always people lining up to do so.

Are you making the argument that "people who think it's a good idea to start restaurants" are representative of "grown-ups?"

I think you're right insofar as you point out that opening a restaurant is a fraught enterprise, but I don't really think that refutes the comment you're responding to - the overwhelming majority of adults don't open restaurants, even though there are always plenty of dreamers who think it's a good idea.

Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#72

Post by Judgmentality »

carbonguy wrote: post #71
Judgmentality wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the HN crowd has different problems in this area than the world-at-large, but "an unrealistic expectation of success in business" is not common among grown-ups. Have you never met someone who opened a restaurant? Peter Thiel actually uses this as a talking point. The surest way to lose money is to open a restaurant, and yet there are always people lining up to do so.

Are you making the argument that "people who think it's a good idea to start restaurants" are representative of "grown-ups?" I think you're right insofar as you point out that opening a restaurant is a fraught enterprise, but I don't really think that refutes the comment you're responding to - the overwhelming majority of adults don't open restaurants, even though there are always plenty of dreamers who think it's a…

My point was many adults do have unrealistic expectations of success. Sure, most people don't start restaurants, but an irrational amount of people do it thinking they'll make it. This is hardly unique to restaurants, this was just an obvious counterexample to poke holes in his argument. I live in San Francisco and see people start companies for the stupidest fucking shit all the time, convinced of their assured success because of their Ivy league degrees. I also watch as almost all of them fail (some just haven't had enough time to fail yet, but obviously one might surprise me some day).

Questioning his assumptions is not meant to refute his argument, only to question it.

Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#73

Post by MathematicalArt »

blacktriangle wrote: post #32

The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…

Actually, there are only finite ways to fail. It just happens to be a large number. Thinking of interactions of the world as propagations of signals and considering Kolmogorov-style descriptions of entropy would lead one to this conclusion of finiteness. See: "Kolmogorov complexity"

Further, there are a finite number of patterns of failure, which is of course less than the number of absolute ways things could fail.

The biggest detriment is not that things can fail, but that people get overwhelmed by believing that such things are infinite in scale.

Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#74

Post by mikestew »

prepend wrote: post #27
roflc0ptic wrote: post #24

The whole TV show “Halt and Catch Fire” was basically about serial failure by a bunch of technically minded narcissists. I’ve never related more to a television show. Notably, it got ignominiously cancelled. I think failure is bad entertainment.

I loved that show and think it finished rather than was cancelled. But many of the folks I recommended it to, didn’t like it. Various reasons provided but I remember stuff like “depressing” and “failure” coming up a lot.

I grew up in that era, and maybe that's the problem, but it struck me as a poorly-done "Mad Men" for geeks. The nostalgia wasn't just tacked on, it was duct-taped and painted bright green to make sure you noticed. One scene that stands out in my mind was when the older business owner is ordering some US Robotics modems. As the scene cuts away from him with a phone in his hand: "Of course I want the V.32!!!11!"

I cringed so hard my shoulders ached for two days.

Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#76

Post by MathematicalArt »

MathematicalArt wrote: post #73
blacktriangle wrote: post #32

The problem with failure is there are infinite ways to fail. So from a pov of looking to reduce my chances of failure, reading about a failure means there are now Inf - 1 ways I might fail, not too useful. Pragmatically reading about success and seeing if I can repurpose their techniques to my situation is far more useful. Where reading about failure is useful is to help remove the general stigma around failure that…

Actually, there are only finite ways to fail. It just happens to be a large number. Thinking of interactions of the world as propagations of signals and considering Kolmogorov-style descriptions of entropy would lead one to this conclusion of finiteness. See: "Kolmogorov complexity" Further, there are a finite number of patterns of failure, which is of course less than the number of absolute ways things could fail. T…

As an example, there are only 16 categorical manifestations of software exceptions based on the following categories:

- Synchronicity, Scope, Origin

For Synchronicity we have:

- Synchronicity

- Asynchronicity

For Scope we have:

- Process-specific

- Cross-process

For Origin we have:

- Data origin

- Temporal origin

- External origin

- Process origin

Then you combine them such as "Synchronous-CrossProcess-Temporal Origin." The total is 16 ways. Even if something were somehow to be missing from this categorization scheme, it would only add a finite amount of possibilities to the permutations. Yet this taxonomy seems quite complete as is.

See: “Error Handling in Process Support Systems” by Casati & Cugola.

Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#78

Post by vuciv1 »

IsopropylMalbec wrote: post #66
vuciv1 wrote: post #33

Haha, well you can read about my failure to make a cartoon episode. It was very depressing, a lot of love went into it, and it crashed and burned after hundreds of hours. https://jerseyfonseca.com/blogs/failingkiwi

That's honestly a heart wrenching story. Your bravery to write it as straight as you have is testament to you. You obviously cared a lot about the film and the people you worked with. That will go with you.

Damn, I never thought anyone would read it or care. I very deeply appreciate your comment, and that you took the time to read it.

I really hope I can try again one day in the future with actual animators!

Re: Let there be more biographies of failures

#80

Post by [deleted] »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #68
bjt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of the survivorship bias I would add the fundamental attribution error, or a close cousin to it. Our stories about successful people tend to attribute their success to inherent qualities and under-emphasize the role of their environment, especially just getting lucky.

Yes—the wealthy sympathetic parent. This is always left out of the speeches. It’s not a hard equation. The wealthy can afford to take risks. They want their kids to succeed. Can take care of that marginal DUI. I could fill up a page of entitlements? They know important people, or have the money, to influence important people. They can get their kids out of trouble. Can pay for schooling. Can risk money on multiple bu…

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