Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is necessarily a change. If we only admit small local errors, we will only make small local changes. The motivation for a big change comes from acknowledging a big mistake.
I do not fully understand this last sentence. Specifically, why does a big mistake imply that a big change needs to be made? Perhaps I am not understanding the difference between a small mistake and a big mistake.
In other words, is a mistake's "bigness" dependent on how much change is required to undo/fix/prevent the mistake? Or is is a mistake's bigness dependent on the effects of the mistake?
A simple mathematical error can cause planes to drop out of the sky for lack of fuel. I instinctively say this is a big mistake with a small change required to fix it.
I think the minor differences between admitting mistakes that require big changes and admitting mistakes that have large consequences trigger different defense mechanisms. Namely, the former is laziness and the latter is shame. Knowing where the resistance comes from is useful when overcoming the resistance. It is also possible to notice the resistance before you realize that a mistake has been made. Consciously acknowledging a mistake can only happen after you begin to realize that a mistake may have been made.
The big examples you use seem to point toward large, shameful confessions, which makes perfect sense. They seem to qualify for both big effects and big changes required to fix them. These probably trigger whatever resistances would have applied to one category or the other. Which is probably why a post like this is such a useful shot in the arm to make one sit down and self-reflect for a few minutes.
All of which is to say, "Yeah, I agree," with paragraphs instead of three words.
That being said, I don't understand why the motivation for a big change comes from acknowledging a big mistake. Wouldn't it be the other way around? If I want to make better, bigger changes, I could start by acknowledging big mistakes. The motivation for the acknowledgement comes from the desire to improve. If acknowledging errors provides motivation to change than I would argue that the change is based on guilt or dissatisfaction. The goal should be positive change, not alleviating pressure on your ego. If acknowledging mistakes is in the way of the higher goal than throw your ego in the fire and improve.
I just finished reading a history of Enron’s downfall, The Smartest Guys in the Room, which hereby wins my award for “Least Appropriate Book Title.”
An unsurprising feature of Enron’s slow rot and abrupt collapse was that the executive players never admitted to having made a large mistake. When catastrophe #247 grew to such an extent that it required an actual policy change, they would say, “Too bad that didn’t work out—it was such a good idea—how are we going to hide the problem on our balance sheet?” As opposed to, “It now seems obvious in retrospect that it was a mistake from the beginning.” As opposed to, “I’ve been stupid.” There was never a watershed moment, a moment of humbling realization, of acknowledging a fundamental problem. After the bankruptcy, Jeff Skilling, the former COO and brief CEO of Enron, declined his own lawyers’ advice to take the Fifth Amendment; he testified before Congress that Enron had been a great company.
Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is necessarily a change. If we only admit small local errors, we will only make small local changes. The motivation for a big change comes from acknowledging a big mistake.
As a child I was raised on equal parts science and science fiction, and from Heinlein to Feynman I learned the tropes of Traditional Rationality: theories must be bold and expose themselves to falsification; be willing to commit the heroic sacrifice of giving up your own ideas when confronted with contrary evidence; play nice in your arguments; try not to deceive yourself; and other fuzzy verbalisms.
A traditional rationalist upbringing tries to produce arguers who will concede to contrary evidence eventually—there should be some mountain of evidence sufficient to move you. This is not trivial; it distinguishes science from religion. But there is less focus on speed, on giving up the fight as quickly as possible, integrating evidence efficiently so that it only takes a minimum of contrary evidence to destroy your cherished belief.
I was raised in Traditional Rationality, and thought myself quite the rationalist. I switched to Bayescraft (Laplace / Jaynes / Tversky / Kahneman) in the aftermath of . . . well, it’s a long story. Roughly, I switched because I realized that Traditional Rationality’s fuzzy verbal tropes had been insufficient to prevent me from making a large mistake.
After I had finally and fully admitted my mistake, I looked back upon the path that had led me to my Awful Realization. And I saw that I had made a series of small concessions, minimal concessions, grudgingly conceding each millimeter of ground, realizing as little as possible of my mistake on each occasion, admitting failure only in small tolerable nibbles. I could have moved so much faster, I realized, if I had simply screamed “OOPS!”
And I thought: I must raise the level of my game.
There is a powerful advantage to admitting you have made a large mistake. It’s painful. It can also change your whole life.
It is important to have the watershed moment, the moment of humbling realization. To acknowledge a fundamental problem, not divide it into palatable bite-size mistakes.
Do not indulge in drama and become proud of admitting errors. It is surely superior to get it right the first time. But if you do make an error, better by far to see it all at once. Even hedonically, it is better to take one large loss than many small ones. The alternative is stretching out the battle with yourself over years. The alternative is Enron.
Since then I have watched others making their own series of minimal concessions, grudgingly conceding each millimeter of ground; never confessing a global mistake where a local one will do; always learning as little as possible from each error. What they could fix in one fell swoop voluntarily, they transform into tiny local patches they must be argued into. Never do they say, after confessing one mistake, I’ve been a fool. They do their best to minimize their embarrassment by saying I was right in principle, or It could have worked, or I still want to embrace the true essence of whatever-I’m-attached-to. Defending their pride in this passing moment, they ensure they will again make the same mistake, and again need to defend their pride.
Better to swallow the entire bitter pill in one terrible gulp.