If we never made mistakes we would never learn anything.
Admitting you made a mistake is a test of integrity. Once you admit it, you learn from the error so you won't repeat it.
But it's becoming a rare thing to see someone admit to a mistake, particularly in the public sphere.
I have no problem admiting a mistake, hapely take the blam when I screwed up...the differnece is that I am very rearly wrong. And as unfortnates at work have found out I can and will burry you in mountians of documantation when you refuse to beleive me.
look if you take osition a and every one else is insstiant that it is position b you better make sure you have doen your damm homework, if not back off until you have had a chance to.
besides there is a certin satisfaction to an I told you so 
"why yes that worst case scenerio that you swore could never happen just did...din't we disscuess this 6 months ago...."
I very seldom get caught making mistakes because I NEVER state something as fact unless I am 100% sure it is - it gets stated as a thought or opinion. And yes, my co-workers have become painfully aware of this, though I am very up front with people on this subject - if I say it is so, and not that I *think* it is so, well, baby, it is f*cking SO, and you can bet I can document and footnote it until the cows come home. I very seldom get into arguments at work anymore, because nobody wants to walk into the spinning prop. And if one of my OPINIONS turns out to be incorrect, I can mea culpa with the best of them. This is one of the reasons I have a lot of respect (and support) John Edwards - he f'ed up in his initial war vote, bowing to all of the **greater experience** and then led with his chin and admitted it, and has admitted it again and again.
What event caused us in America to see admitting a mistake as weakness? I keep pointing to the nauseating "reality" TV where people can only win through lying, backstabbing and deceipt, but I suspect there was a chicken that came along before that egg. Any opinions?
Great post Jess' - very admirable attitude you have about personal frailty and all that stuff - Me? Don't think I've ever really been wrong about anything or made any mistakes that I can think... Oh - uh... well there was that one little thing with the underage Filipina - Believe me, she looked much older than they claimed she was - Anyway, it was all taken care of - a few dollars in hush... - er, uh - some appropriate social and financial support for the young lady involved - enrollment in The Olongapo City School For Wayward Girls & Displaced Nightclub Workers - a coupla injections - a hit of Liq Nitro to the affected areas - and everything turned out all right. Nope!!! Never been wrong about a single thing my entire life - to date that is - still time I guess - to make one of those - uhhh... I forget... Mistakes!! Yeah!! That's it!! Then again - there was that episode with the Malaysian chick and her two Thai dwarf girlfriends...
one of the cooler things that i've learned how to do from being in AA all these years is that i figured out how to say "i was wrong. how can we make this better?" learning how to go there with my kids was the hardest. i wanted to be the dad that was always on top of things. i learned different. thing was though, adjusting my evaluation of my parental skill set downward, becoming less certain of my own rightness and judgement made me a better parent.
looking my kids in the eyes and telling them that i blew it, and that i wanted to make things right with them made a huge difference for my family.
there's the old saw "do you want to be right? or do you want to be happy?" it often rings true.
No learning without pain.
No art without the resistance of the medium.
Three of my bedrock principles at work are:
Fail Quickly
If you have a longshot option which has potential, pursue it if a negative result occurs quickly. Quick cheap and often wrong approaches allow you to eliminate blind alleys quickly.
Reconnaissance by Fire
Running early tests and finding errors is better than trying to wring out all bugs by design. Of course this is when no permanent damage occurs in testing and subtle problems don't sneak in.
Negative Results are Good
Knowing that a given approach doesn't work is valuable information.
Being wrong is part of evolution, probing as many options as possible and determining which are wrong before damage or wasted effort occur is good. Just make sure that the errors are safe and don't snowball.
On the other side, tolerance for honest mistakes is crucial to allow for learning and progress. Shaming someone for honest errors is highly counter productive. Mistakes are best corrected as privately and politely as possible. Of course if such mistakes are deliberate and stand uncorrected you have to take more painful approaches.
*SO MUCH* needless human suffering has happened because we're so freaking threatened by the possibility of being wrong, or even worse, being wrong and being *found out*. Or we're too stupid to even understand the possibility that we might be wrong; we lack the reasoning skills to reevaluate, much less the motivation. Or we're so addicted to that rush of superiority when we get to treat other people as intellectually wrong, or morally wrong, or having the wrong God, or the wrong skin color or culture, or the wrong set of social skills, or the wrong freaking spelling or grammar.
So we cover up, we refuse to apologize, we avoid the question, we resort to cheap attacks and lame defenses. We ostracize, we demonize, we cling to our little cliques. Sometimes we even kill each other.
I hate it in myself and I hate it in other people.
On a less ranty note, I went back to one of the past posts that Jesse linked to, and noticed this from Mrs Robinson, whose comment gives me hope that "the whole complex mess" will indeed "come together" for me someday:
http://www.groupnewsblog.net/
200...upid.html#22893
SteveK:
No art without the resistance of the medium.
I like this.
I'm wrong so often I should have a sitcom and a laugh track. Fortunately, in my old age, I find me funny.
Humility really helps.
Looks like Nathan is a republican-in-training... takes right after the rest of them, doesn't he?
On the subject of fallibility, I got this from a mailing list today:
Cattywumpus
snoozer:
It's a Raymond Chandler quote.
Actually another one from him that is appropriate is:
"An author who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong."
Good thing there aren't any of those around.
Please dial down the ego a bit, it's really getting to be an obstruction to your arguments.
It's your blog, and you can do what you like, but good f---in' christ you are full of yourself in the worst writerly way. Your indulgent writers-are-kings-of-the-world autofellatio session a couple weeks back almost got me sympathetic with the AMPTP, and I *know* they're shits.
You've become a counterexample to yourself two ways. First, the way you write proves that writers need editors to save them from their own self-indulgence. (Talk about people with no public profile who are undervalued!) And second, you are a member of a class that is actively devaluing and destroying (I first wrote "destorying" there, an interesting slip) the value of professional writers by writing for free, EVEN DURING A WRITERS STRIKE. Writers and their families need to eat, and I bear them no ill will whatsoever (even the ones who write absolute crap), but realistically the longer the strike goes the more opportunities for non-union bloggers and journalers will develop, and the more people like you will undermine the writers' position.
This kid is a dick. This anchorperson is a dick. Kinda indicative of the situation we are in.
Angelo F-
Writing on a blog hurts tv show writers? Give me a break.
Angelo F. --
Go blow yourself.
Why don't you go hit http://www.blogger.com and see if you can find a market for what you have to say?
1. There is no union for bloggers or journalers, thus we're not undermining anyone's position.
2. My colleague Lower Manhattanite IS in the WGAE, and is on strike -- against the studios. As GNB Media, the parent company of Group News Blog is not a WGA signatory, since we don't produce either movies or television shows, we are not being struck against and LM can write for us all he wants. And GNB can write as much as it wants in support of the strike, or on anything we want without being in violation of any contract.
3. We have received email from UnitedHollwood.com, the unofficial home of the strike, thanking us for our writing, as recently as two days ago. That's the same day one of my articles on the strike was picked up in Salon's Blog Report.
4. WGA writers are actively writing in order to get public opinion on their side.
News flash: It's working. Survey after survey says the public sides with the writers against the studios.
Finally -- again, you're invited to open your own blog anytime you like and advance your inane arguments. It's as easy as typing: http://www.blogger.com and hitting Enter.
Done with you.
PS. This was off topic to this post, you gunky.
Angelo F: you relise that tv wirters are on strike, not all writers. there is a diferance.
Good points re Nathan Dnazi Jones. Dude has a major boner between his ears. He is neither right nor possessed of a shred of integrity. He and Jessica Maroclo need to apologize the the PSU and VTU communities for being such jerks. Yeah, there's the 2st Amendment but there's also the concept of being in touch with our common humanity.
Oh, and I loved how he bragged of dressing up as one of those little Amish girls who were shot by a pedophile at the Nickel Mines school last year. Nathan Jones is in major need of a psychological evaluation.
I'm borrowing the clip from above. Don't worry, I'll link back to your blog.
Thanks.
I believe in freedom of expression.
But when people are still hurting from recent tragedies, perhaps it's better to not publicly make fun of victims.
Maybe Jones didn't mean to make a statement and cause harm and was only trying to have fun - but his actions come across as callous. I can't really speak for anyone.
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