TITLE: Failure with a Purpose
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 31, 2015 11:51 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I am committed to
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2015-01.html#e2015-01-01T11_29_30.htm">
   being wrong bigger and more often</A>
in 2015.  Yet I am mindful of Avdi Grimm's
<A HREF="http://devblog.avdi.org/2015/01/20/who-is-your-failure-helping/">
   admonition</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 ... failure isn't always that informative.  You can learn
 a thousand different ways to fail and never learn a single
 way to succeed.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

To fail for failure's sake is foolish and wasteful.  In writing,
the awful stuff you write when you start isn't usually valuable
in itself, but rather for what we learn from studying and
practicing.  In science, failing isn't usually valuable in
itself, but rather for what you learn when you prove an idea
wrong.  The scientist's mindset has a built-in correction for
dealing with failure: every surprising result prompts a new
attempt to understand <EM>why</EM> and build a better model.

As Grimm says, be sure you know what purpose your failure will
serve.  Sometimes, taking bigger risks intellectually can help
us get off a plateau in our thinking, or even a local maximum.
The failure pays off when we pay attention to the outcome and
find a better hill to climb.
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