All men can make mistakes; but, once mistaken, a man is no longer stupid or accursed who, having fallen on ill, tries to cure that ill, not taking a fine undeviating stand. It is obstinacy that convicts of folly.
This is why sincere stupidity is actually worse than insincere stupidity: the sincere tend to insist on their folly.
e.g. in this dialogue form (which I see way too much of on LessWrong):
A: X’s action Y was stupid, and X should have known this because of Z.
B: But X’s action was entirely justifiable according to V and W!
B’s statement is in the place in a discussion where a refutation would go, but doesn’t actually address the folly; and seems to claim that sincerity makes stupidity less bad. Whereas in practice, sincere stupidity promises more stupidity in the future.
(A’s statement is an assertion about the processes leading X to commit Y, rather than merely the folly of Y; however, A is asserting that bad results that could have been reasonably predicted should have been. The discussion can then go into a long thread about the meaning of “reasonable”, possibly with one of A or B subtly dissing the other’s Bayesian-fu.)
I think this is a useful way to think of things, so you don’t worry about changing and committing another mistake—it’s a good way to make yourself cost-sensitive to mistake duration.
-Confucius
A concurring opinion:
Sophocles, Antigone
This is why sincere stupidity is actually worse than insincere stupidity: the sincere tend to insist on their folly.
e.g. in this dialogue form (which I see way too much of on LessWrong):
B’s statement is in the place in a discussion where a refutation would go, but doesn’t actually address the folly; and seems to claim that sincerity makes stupidity less bad. Whereas in practice, sincere stupidity promises more stupidity in the future.
(A’s statement is an assertion about the processes leading X to commit Y, rather than merely the folly of Y; however, A is asserting that bad results that could have been reasonably predicted should have been. The discussion can then go into a long thread about the meaning of “reasonable”, possibly with one of A or B subtly dissing the other’s Bayesian-fu.)
I think this is a useful way to think of things, so you don’t worry about changing and committing another mistake—it’s a good way to make yourself cost-sensitive to mistake duration.
From the Analects, although I can’t seem to narrow it down any further. (There are a lot of ways to translate things.)
Chapter 15, verse 30.
I think you may need to specify translation or edition; eg. I don’t see anything similar in http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Analects/Section_3#Part_15
That would be:
The verse number may differ slightly between versions: on this site it’s verse 29.
It’s translated as
there. The wikisource/Legge translation is more literal, but I’m not sure it’s better.