Feed Your Head: Always an Option!

[athelind]

Last week's Yoda quote raised a little controversy in the comments.

Here's another quote that I find equally compelling:

"Failure is always an option!"

—Adam Savage, Mythbusters

In my mind, this does not conflict in any way with Yoda's "Do, or do not; there is no try."

Let's put that into some context, courtesy CNET:

That leads to another question I wanted to ask: Talk about the notion of "Failure is always an option."

Savage: Well, people always imagine a scientist sets up an experiment to prove something. When it doesn't, they imagine him saying "my experiment was a failure." In fact, a real scientist sets up an experiment to test something. If he was wrong about his preconceptions, he's far from upset. In fact, it means something else entirely new has been illuminated. This is how it is for us, and thus we say that any experiment that yields data, even if we were wrong about what that data would be, is a successful experiment.

As Unca Sammy taught me to say:

Failure₁ is not Failure₂.

When Yoda says, "that is why you fail₁", he's saying "you have sabotaged yourself with your own doubt and disbelieve, and your impatience has caused you to surrender when you have actually made headway toward accomplishing your goal." Only, you know, in backwards Muppet Moonspeak.

Failure₁ means giving up.

When Adam says "failure₂ is not an option", he's saying that, to an experimenter, there are no failures: there are unanticipated successes.

Failure₂ means learning something new.

They are the same word, but they are not the same idea.

---

The "Feed Your Head" series started with the subject line, "Things I KNOW, but need to LEARN". If I sound didactic, rest assured that you are not the intended student body.

Which doesn't mean you're not welcome to audit the course, naturally.

---

Comments

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I spend an incredible amount of time trying to point out to my students that they haven't failed anything until they've given up trying to improve it. Until then, their mistakes are constructive and are helping them towards their best work.

Example: a couple of months ago, I asked my kids to decide which was greater, 5/8 or 3/4, and then prove it. An awful lot of them decided they thought 5/8 was greater. I didn't correct them; I told them they had a hypothesis and now they had to test it. I had a couple of kids who were convinced until the end of the second trial that the first trial was wrong and 5/8 really was greater. Then I had to coach them out of their dejection by pointing out that they hadn't given up, they'd accepted the right answer when it was staring them in the face, and they'd revised their hypothesis at the end without lying about what their original hypothesis had been. I gave them the same mark that I gave to the kids who got the hypothesis right to begin with.

It's much, much harder to apply this idea to life lessons than it is to lab work or math, though. We're trained from early childhood to see mistakes as bad things that lower our rewards from the exercise (grades at first, later money or prestige.) It's hard to get past that.

[toob.livejournal.com]

This calls for a RUSH QUOTE!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

"You can fight
Fight without ever winning
But never, ever win
Win without a fight."

-- Rush, "Resist",
from Test for Echo

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Re: This calls for a RUSH QUOTE!

[toob.livejournal.com]

I disobey Rush.

All my wins have been without fighting.

Maybe fighting PREVENTS winning?

Re: This calls for a RUSH QUOTE!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

You win.

Re: This calls for a RUSH QUOTE!

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

Well, *I* think your Rush quote is awesome. Nothing I've ever gotten in my life has come without a fight -- sometimes a fight to the death. Re: toob below, it must really be nice to live a life where everything is handed to you on a silver platter.

Re: This calls for a RUSH QUOTE!

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

"No one gets to their heaven without a fight"

-Rush "Armor and Sword"

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

If you fail to learn that is when actual failure occurs. This I think is what Yoda is saying but with the Force. Luke saying he doesn't believe it is pretty much an admission of not learning what he's been doing for how long he's been there ("Alright I'll give it a try" is pretty much an admission I think that he sees this as much different than what he's done, let alone the line "You want the impossible"). After failing, he disbelieves when just said seconds earlier Yoda says and demonstrates how this is all possible. Yoda's given him the background to understand, but Luke has learned how to lift small things, not the implications of it. Rather than embrace the possibility of these greater implications he spurns it. He chooses to close off his mind before even trying.

The sad thing is how many want to just give up. I don't know how many I've taught experimental techniques to. When something goes wrong they want to throw it all out and start again. I keep telling them that these techniques aren't set in stone. Their mistake may not matter to the final experimental result, or may show something different. Either way everyone could learn from it, and maybe modify the experimental protocol. My first paper was a shot in dark at what seemed reasonable. :)

I suppose its the same in life. Much as I try so hard to avoid massive mistakes, they have often been the major source for improvement in who I am. However, they only are as long as I try to learn. velvetpage is right that it is a harder thing to apply to life lessons, yet I think its vital that we do.