Roy Winkler said:
> This certainly must be a cultural component of successful learning
>organizations. If I am handicapped by fear of permanent retribution for
>my errors, I am likely to actively avoid making mistakes, or to hide them
>when they do occur. In the former case, my contribution to the
>organization is limited. In the latter, I may be hiding information that
>is crucial to the organization.
>
>>The
>> results at a distance concept seems to make some errors likely
>> unavoidable for many people during their learning phases.
>
> There seems a broad consensus that creativity is nurtured by an
>atmosphere of benevolent acceptance of error. In fact, if you examine
>learning, you may find that one has not "learned" about something by
>merely doing the right things. By doing only the right things, one does
>not discover the dimensions of the envelope. Only by doing the wrong
>things occasionally, will one define the boundaries of knowledge about the
>subject.
I have made this comment before here, but it seems relevant again:
Mistakes and errors are always value judgments rendered after the fact. No
one intentionally makes a mistake. We do the best we can given our
understanding, experience, knowledge, and information, and things happen.
Usually what happens is a combination of the expected and unexpected.
Sometimes we may judge that to be good and sometimes we may be bothered by
it. However, the most realistic thing we can say about the results of our
actions, rather we judge them to be successful or not, is that we can
learn from them. This helps us to refine our understanding and get a
little better at what we're doing. If we know this, we are more likely to
want to experiment because it will enhance our learning. This does not, I
might hasten to add, mean that we should not be thoughtful about our
experiments or not use good experimental methodology (whatever that might
be). But it does suggest that risk taking is good. In fact, we might
come to realize that we can't avoid risks. So we might as well embrace
that as a part of life and be willing try new things with enthusiasm
tempered by intelligence.
May the new year bring us new experiences and friendships,
-- John Woods jwoods@execpc.com