What have you recently tried, and failed at?

Emile

Kaj Sotala said:

[I]f you punish yourself for trying and failing, you stop wanting to try in the first place, as it becomes associated with the negative emotions. Also, accepting and being okay with the occasional failure makes you treat it as a genuine choice where you have agency, not something that you're forced to do against your will.

So maybe we should celebrate failed attempts more often ... I for one can't think of anything I've failed at recently, which is probably a sign that I'm not trying enough new things.

So, what specific things have you failed at recently?

Kaj Sotala said:

[I]f you punish yourself for trying and failing, you stop wanting to try in the first place, as it becomes associated with the negative emotions. Also, accepting and being okay with the occasional failure makes you treat it as a genuine choice where you have agency, not something that you're forced to do against your will.

So maybe we should celebrate failed attempts more often ... I for one can't think of anything I've failed at recently, which is probably a sign that I'm not trying enough new things.

So, what specific things have you failed at recently?

I recently got into communicating with non-scientific people. I got really proud of a new way of trying to convince post-modernists that there was indeed such a thing as ideas that were 'more right' and 'less right' that I wrote up a blog post and posted it here for review. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/dfs/we_prosecute_ceos_for_failing_to_do_due_diligence/)

But I misunderstood the posting rules and put it on the main site instead of the discussions. 4 people didn't like what I wrote, which more than wiped out all of the karma I've built up since I joined.

I'm now trying to salvage the situation by at least learning what I misunderstood or misstated about epistemology. I'm hoping I'll get some more comments explaining what happened. Rest assured, I've already learned the other lesson - the one about where to post stuff.

I'm trying to celebrate this failure. And I suppose if I do get any meaningful feedback, I will indeed have something to celebrate.

It's very easy for new people to care way too much about karma. I did. I still care too much, but I mostly shrug it off if I get downvoted. It happens to everyone, even EY. So I'd encourage you to not worry about it too much, even though I know that's hard for new people to do. It certainly was for me. Just remember getting downvoted doesn't mean we hate you. :-)

Secondly, you can hyperlink like this: LessWrong by using this format: [LessWrong](http://www.lesswrong.com)

1Viliam_Bur14y

I never wrote an article to LW -- is it possible for the author to move their article from Main to Discussion? Or is some moderator help needed? EDIT: A nice functionality would be also to move one's article from Discussion to Open Thread, preserving the comment structure below the article. (This is not related to the article about CEOs, just generally.)

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What have you recently tried, and failed at?

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What have you recently tried, and failed at?

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