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With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how t
by michael_nielsen 11y ago
With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
- smacktoward 11y agoGod, how I hate this quote. It's TR justifying his own worst qualities -- his impetuousity, his willingness to wade into things without thinking them through. Two years after he made that speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic) he would wade into the 1912 Presidential election, where his major accomplishment was splitting the Republican vote and therefore handing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. Action, by itself, is not always the best thing. Sometimes action is wasted, or even counterproductive. Georges Danton called for "l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" and ended up getting his head cut off. Then at the turn of the 20th century the French generals picked up his slogan again and marched a generation to death by machine-gun. Lessig is actually a good example of this; his quixotic campaign has cost him a lot of goodwill among people who agree with him on the issues and should be his core supporters. He's going to have to spend some time over the next few years rebuilding bridges that would still be standing if he hadn't himself burned them. What a waste.
- oldmanjay 11y agoLuckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, and an adventurous can-do sensibility drives us all onward.
- tptacek 11y agoUnfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs. Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.
- oldmanjay 11y agoAbsolutely true, so long as humanity is made of billions of individuals all pulling in their own direction, there will be risk, disaster, death, destruction, and amazing advancement. I find the last worth all the preceding. edit: missed some words
- zeveb 11y ago> Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq. Or, possibly, the reason we didn't nuke Afghanistan. Remember, prior to the actual invasion Clinton sent more missiles into Iraq than the Bushes put together; JFK started and LBJ escalated the Vietnam Wars: who knows what Gore would have done, presented with the attacks on 11 September 2001?
- tptacek 11y agoThere are a total of zero serious observers who believe Al Gore would have "nuked Afghanistan", but there's a nonzero number who believe 9/11 might not have happened had he been elected. Al Gore is not a particularly great human being, but in addition to the banal malevolence George Bush shares with Al Gore and every other politician, and the additional evil he shares with the Neoconservative political movement he belonged to, Bush was also, as it turns out, alarmingly incompetent.
- pen2l 11y agoI think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a little more left. Obama took us to Syria, would you have guessed he would do that when he was campaigning? I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.
- coffeemug 11y agoThere are far more people in the world who will happily point out the obvious truth that if your undertaking doesn't succeed it will fail, than people who will give a rational analysis of why a given undertaking is a bad idea. Teddy Roosevelt's quote is addressed towards the former, not the latter.
- tptacek 11y agoThere's a sleight of hand happening in your comment. He's not saying "if you don't succeed, you'll fail". He's saying "if you don't succeed, you'll fail, and could harm the world in the process". But by reframing it in the most uncharitable possible way, you've made that sensible point sound ridiculous.
- ThomPete 11y agoThats missing the essence of that quote IMO. Of course people are going to fail even again and again. You are somehow assuming that there are ways to know. But if anything we learned it is that it's trough trial and error and luck that we mostly succeed not trough armchair strategy sessions. You seem to have an issue with TR that clouds your ability to understand whats important in that quote IMO.
- tptacek 11y agoIt's a kind of "Peak HN" when someone manages to accuse someone else of shilling for the anti-Teddy-Roosevelt lobby.
- ThomPete 11y agoYeah but thats not what I did.
- Eupolemos 11y agoHe is not missing it, he is addressing when it does not fit the situation and points out that this is one of those moments. There's a sweetspot with weighing planning and doing.
- ThomPete 11y agoHow many people do you think advised Obama against running for president? You don't know before you try. You don't even know if Lessig very well knew that the didn't have a big chance but just wanted to see if he could build political momentum behind is case. Of course we can have opinions about what he did but ultimately those are not important. Even my opinions about those opinions are not important. The only thing that is important is that some people try and whether they fail or succeed the fact that they do, despite the obviousness of the failure that we can sit and look at afterwards it's more important that someone does that than someone comment on it. In the political game giving voice even to minority of the voters is an important part of the democratic proces. If not enough voter gets behind it they fail but at least they have the opportunity to try. At least to me that was the gist of the quote and the reason for the quote. Being able to claim that Lessig was obviously wrong for even trying has zero value.
- drumdance 11y agoTaking risks has no meaning if there are no downside consequences.
- mbesto 11y agoA perhaps more concise quote would be: There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agouh... lots of statues erected to honor critics... https://www.google.com/search?q=movie+critic+statue&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMIgv3DxqnzyAIVRtg-Ch0FvgyH&biw=1422&bih=753&dpr=0.9 https://www.google.com/search?q=movie+critic+statue&safe=off... oh, i see... you thought "concise" meant "less correct". sorry, i don't always spot the idiot right away.
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- MagnumOpus 11y agoMore concise, but incorrect. Witness the Roger Ebert statue in Champaign, IL: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/25/roger-ebert-film-critic-statue-ebertfest http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/25/roger-ebert-film...