5 ms·

the problem with wanting to write biographies of failures is the same problem with publishing negative results in science: there are too many failures, and too

by mjfl 6y ago

the problem with wanting to write biographies of failures is the same problem with publishing negative results in science: there are too many failures, and too many ways to fail. It's like entropy - there are so many ways to do something wrong that it's not very efficient to learn how to do something by enumerating all the ways you cannot do it. Much rarer is success, which is why it's more worth the time to study. Maybe this is a controversial opinion. Maybe adjacent failures are worth study - studies of people who very nearly succeeded compared to someone who did, where subtle differences ended up being significant. These kinds of things can create "what to watch out for" kinds of guides. In addition - what is failure? Was Nikola Tesla a failure? He died broke... but he still invented AC generators...

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
I think the counter-point to this (Which you kind of bring up, "what to watch out for") is that success is often more about not losing than winning. So reading about other people's failures can be very helpful in ensuring you don't lose. The other thing is that although a failure may be unique overall, there are undoubtedly common aspects among failures. So I feel like you can sift through a lot of failures relatively quickly once you find some of the common patterns. For example, one of the most common failures of startups is no market for the product. Therefore, if you're researching a failed company and it seems like this is the case you can assume there will be little value in this failure and skip ahead. Another possible technique following this line of thinking is to apply filters. If they failed before they reached x point, you can skip ahead.
atleta 6y ago
Yes, it's right. Still, in some form, these should be valuable because they would help understanding what actually made a difference for the ones who did succeed. Because most of the time we just ask them (or they tell us without asking) how they did it. But they may have no idea whether what they think was the key actually was the key. In short: it could help with removing (some of) the survivorship bias.
icsllaf 6y ago
> it's not very efficient to learn how to do something by enumerating all the ways you cannot do it I think the better way to look at it would be to look at ways that it could've been done better. Everyone's a genius and mastermind that knows exactly why a certain product fails ("if they only had know this") or that the "bubble was there all along". Learning what could've been done better is much better than success stories where people knew what to do from some divine inspiration.
dudeinjapan 6y ago
This sounds adjacent to the Anna Karenina principle: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
bongoman37 6y ago
Biographies of failures are not the same as negative results in science. A negative result has value and it may not be as sexy as a positive result but should be published if not for anything more than to prevent other people from going down the same path or to add more data in meta studies. Also, negative or positive depends on how the original hypothesis is framed. One person could claim that X has no effect on Y as the null hypothesis, and another could claim that X has an effect on Y, and the same results would give a positive result for one, and negative for another.
- b3kart 6y ago
  I don't think negative vs. positive is a useful bifurcation here, both for biographies and scientific results. I'd rather we do interesting/surprising vs boring/expected. In other words, can we learn something from this? There are biographies of "failures" that are full of wisdom and reflection, as well as biographies of "successes" that have stumbled upon the success without so much as a second thought, and vice versa. Same for scientific results.
sradman 6y ago
> Was Nikola Tesla a failure? He was a brilliant innovator that added value to the world. He was a failed entrepreneur that did not recapture part of the value he created. That makes him a huge success in my books but I wish he was more comfortable and content in his final years.

by mjfl 6y ago

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

I think the counter-point to this (Which you kind of bring up, "what to watch out for") is that success is often more about not losing than winning. So reading about other people's failures can be very helpful in ensuring you don't lose. The other thing is that although a failure may be unique overall, there are undoubtedly common aspects among failures. So I feel like you can sift through a lot of failures relatively quickly once you find some of the common patterns. For example, one of the most common failures of startups is no market for the product. Therefore, if you're researching a failed company and it seems like this is the case you can assume there will be little value in this failure and skip ahead. Another possible technique following this line of thinking is to apply filters. If they failed before they reached x point, you can skip ahead.

atleta 6y ago

Yes, it's right. Still, in some form, these should be valuable because they would help understanding what actually made a difference for the ones who did succeed. Because most of the time we just ask them (or they tell us without asking) how they did it. But they may have no idea whether what they think was the key actually was the key. In short: it could help with removing (some of) the survivorship bias.

icsllaf 6y ago

> it's not very efficient to learn how to do something by enumerating all the ways you cannot do it I think the better way to look at it would be to look at ways that it could've been done better. Everyone's a genius and mastermind that knows exactly why a certain product fails ("if they only had know this") or that the "bubble was there all along". Learning what could've been done better is much better than success stories where people knew what to do from some divine inspiration.

dudeinjapan 6y ago

This sounds adjacent to the Anna Karenina principle: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

bongoman37 6y ago

Biographies of failures are not the same as negative results in science. A negative result has value and it may not be as sexy as a positive result but should be published if not for anything more than to prevent other people from going down the same path or to add more data in meta studies. Also, negative or positive depends on how the original hypothesis is framed. One person could claim that X has no effect on Y as the null hypothesis, and another could claim that X has an effect on Y, and the same results would give a positive result for one, and negative for another.

b3kart 6y ago
I don't think negative vs. positive is a useful bifurcation here, both for biographies and scientific results. I'd rather we do interesting/surprising vs boring/expected. In other words, can we learn something from this? There are biographies of "failures" that are full of wisdom and reflection, as well as biographies of "successes" that have stumbled upon the success without so much as a second thought, and vice versa. Same for scientific results.

sradman 6y ago

> Was Nikola Tesla a failure? He was a brilliant innovator that added value to the world. He was a failed entrepreneur that did not recapture part of the value he created. That makes him a huge success in my books but I wish he was more comfortable and content in his final years.