Failure
How important is it to fail?
A friend was pointing out this phrase "fail to succeed". Does it mean failure in succeeding or failing now to succeed later. I thought it was an interesting interpretation... corny - but interesting.
That brings me to the importance of failing itself. Is it possible to succeed and sustain it without having faced failure, frustration and disappointment? Let's leave the philosophical discussion about character-building and stepping stones aside. That can be a different discussion in itself.
What I am pondering is the utility of failure as a training method - a training sample for the pattern classifier that allows us to identify the right choice to be made each step of the way. We don't know pain unless we feel it first. And then it serves as a benchmark for all subsequent pain. In a similar fashion, how are we to know what failure is and what leads to failure - without ever failing? Consequently, how are we to know what the right choices are - the ones that lead to success; without failing? Are vicarious learning methods enough? We can learn from others, but is it enough? Considering personal preferences and aptitude vary, and there is a large uncertainty factor in that we don't know the other person's background and history (we are only looking at a snapshot of his/her current status and their discernible, distinct steps).
From more personal experience, as long as things seemed to come easy (relatively at least), I took the first option that seemed appealing - and sometimes (quite often) it led me to dead ends and destinations I didn't want to go to. On the other hand, the more failure and frustration I face, the more clear my preferences for the various options seem to be.
Is failure clarifying? And therefore essential? Were the marines right? Will all that won't kill you make you stronger? Hmm...
A friend was pointing out this phrase "fail to succeed". Does it mean failure in succeeding or failing now to succeed later. I thought it was an interesting interpretation... corny - but interesting.
That brings me to the importance of failing itself. Is it possible to succeed and sustain it without having faced failure, frustration and disappointment? Let's leave the philosophical discussion about character-building and stepping stones aside. That can be a different discussion in itself.
What I am pondering is the utility of failure as a training method - a training sample for the pattern classifier that allows us to identify the right choice to be made each step of the way. We don't know pain unless we feel it first. And then it serves as a benchmark for all subsequent pain. In a similar fashion, how are we to know what failure is and what leads to failure - without ever failing? Consequently, how are we to know what the right choices are - the ones that lead to success; without failing? Are vicarious learning methods enough? We can learn from others, but is it enough? Considering personal preferences and aptitude vary, and there is a large uncertainty factor in that we don't know the other person's background and history (we are only looking at a snapshot of his/her current status and their discernible, distinct steps).
From more personal experience, as long as things seemed to come easy (relatively at least), I took the first option that seemed appealing - and sometimes (quite often) it led me to dead ends and destinations I didn't want to go to. On the other hand, the more failure and frustration I face, the more clear my preferences for the various options seem to be.
Is failure clarifying? And therefore essential? Were the marines right? Will all that won't kill you make you stronger? Hmm...
posted by Harish at 12:08
3 Comments:
Hi,
I found you blog from Vaishnavi's page. I could not help but comment, life is more like online training, dont you think.
Also, while training a classifier, you usually have clear cut notions of success/failure, you even have a performance/error functions. Alas, in life, this thing called failure is rather ill defined, and always even if we do not agree unique to each individual.
On drawing futher parallels, do we need "training with rubbish"?
I am not sure if "life" itself can be trivialized to being a mere classifier/decision maker, there are numerous occasions at least in my everyday life, where i do not want to judge or assess something, i just want to leave it at that.
if life were really that simple, Duda, Hart and Stork would have been the most popular people around.
Life's what it is abstract, predicable, complex, illdefined, but its life. something to get high on.
Raghu
Raghu,
Thanks for stopping by.
Ok.. I guess the use of 'classification' and 'classifier' so often leads to the conclusion that I mean discrete classifiers like the ones in DHS. I really implied a more 'english language' definition of the word... in all its vagueness.
What I meant to say with classification was a general direction rather than putting experiences into discrete bins.
Also choosing not to decide is a decision in itself... and can have major consequences in life. Or so I'd like to believe.
Cheers,
H
I feel that failure is a very essential experience that helps you see your weaknesses so you can work on them or if you can't, helps you learn acceptance. I have been there so I know it, once you have falied and suffered and then bounced back and succeded, it tastes even better!
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