On Failures

Why is it that people like writing about success stories? What does one actually learn from a success story when it is a statistical anomaly than anything else, since each success is characterised by hundreds if not thousands of failures prior to it happening? Maybe it is because there is a certain sense of an ego, that talking about successes hides the fact that one had failed many more times than that one success would show. Maybe it is because of the notion of ``reputation'', where one's worth is only measured by the successes that one has as opposed to the number of lessons learnt from the failures that one made.

I think that for a long while now, I have been writing here from the perspective of the failure. I rarely write about successes---as I had said, they are too few statistically to be worth any useful information, and even in the cases where the success stories are well-written, tend to be ego-inflating pieces than anything that is actually lesson worthy. Why should I write about my success? Why should I read about so-and-so's success when I cannot learn anything useful from it? All I can learn from their success story is a particular configuration of factors that led to their success, factors that may be hard to replicate, or in the worst case, factors that become clichéd that one can no longer repeat the success for oneself. Think about the last time you've read about a success story; I'll just pick a random one, the rise of Facebook as an illustrative example. So okay, you learn about the formula of a ``social network'' that Facebook propounds, and then what happens? You see many people trying to copy and use the same formula as a way of creating their own social network, in a bid to mimic the success that Facebook had. Some will be successful, of course, but many will fail. But none will ever outshine that of the initial proponent---none will ever outdo the success that Facebook has.

What has this got to do with anything?

Think about how Science works. I used to have a romantic view on how Science was all about the advancement of human knowledge, and how scientists were working relentlessly towards new discoveries that can benefit all of us in one way or another. Then I got exposed to an aspect of the real process and didn't like what I find. It might be that the scientists are still conforming to my initial views on development and advancement, but what they have been publishing appears contrary to the principles of the scientific method. Again we find that only success stories are published; few if any of the failures actually make it into a journal or conference paper. It is quite sad [and hypocritical] really, since there is a lot of wasted work as everyone keeps repeating the same damn mistakes and failures only because those who had initially made them did not document them for the rest of the community to learn of. I think that this is what gets me more than anything else while I was still apprenticing to be a researcher, that so much time and effort is wasted on this. I value efficiency over many things, and to have to spend so much time failing is just too much to bear on my conscience. And that is one of the reasons why I gave up.

But back to something less heavy. Why all the talk about writing about failures then? Because I can write more here. I doubt anyone who is still reading my blog wants to hear of my successes only---for one there are few of those, and for two it makes me sounds like a much larger egomaniac than I really am (I'm not really an egomaniac). So I will write about failures and accept that I am still human, in spite of my chosen handle and other things. Maybe someone out there who chances upon my blog(s) can learn from my failures and be successful in their own right---it'll be nice to know if that has happened.

Rant out.