11 ms·

Inability to achieve any lasting perfection is not fought, but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity. Imperfection, i

by kirse 18y ago

Inability to achieve any lasting perfection is not fought, but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity. Imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness is incorporated directly into the design No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. For us who build and produce, it can be a vicious cycle of obsessing over the details, succeeding, and then reaping external validation from others for that success. However, I would question this approach that says "these external things I make will always be imperfect" instead of simply saying "I internally accept myself, in entirety, for who I am." The first case only solves issues of perfectionism, while the second - self-acceptance - goes much farther than just addressing perfectionist tendencies.

ruby_roo 18y ago
How does one accept themselves for what they are? How does that work exactly? And what does it mean to have accepted yourself for who you are? Serious question. I just get the impression that we have different ideas of what this means, and if we could be more definitive, the 'how to' should become obvious. This is something I struggle with personally, so I'm very interested to see what others say.
- kirse 18y ago
  -- This is something I struggle with personally Don't worry, you're not alone, every single person does. -- How does one accept themselves for what they are? This is such a deep question that I honestly can't provide an easy answer, and it would be foolish of me to claim that I knew an easy answer. When I say self-acceptance, I'm talking about being entirely at peace with one's self and being completely content in life (true happiness). Self-acceptance is something that is unique to everyone's own personal situation. Your troubles are different than mine, and my experiences are different than yours. So what you might have to overcome was easy for me, and what I have to overcome may be easy for you. Nevertheless, since you asked, I personally find I am most at peace with myself through Christianity. I believe that I'm placed here on Earth with a purpose and a plan, and can completely accept myself (faults and all) because I have a God that accepts and loves me unconditionally for who I am, imperfections and all. It really is that simple, and it becomes more self-evident every day that it just plain works. While religion hardly goes well over the net, I think this board is intelligent enough to understand this one thing: It is often said that religion is a crutch, but everyone needs a crutch to get through life. For me, the thing that delivers an unshakeable self-acceptance and true happiness is following Christianity. Good luck on your search, many others are on your path, including myself. =)
  - coffeemug 18y ago
    Actually, if you're sufficiently intelligent and open-minded, you're bound to eventually run into religion. Not necessarily in a sense that you'll accept that an Abrahamic God (or some other gods) created the universe, but in a sense that you'll wonder about what it must be like to view the world from that point of view. The real religious thinkers were philosophers a world apart from how many on the internet perceive the religious right.
    - SapphireSun 18y ago
      That's a great lead in to something I really wanted to discuss on HN. I was in my ethics class today and my professor started talking about plato's cave allegory, how one can only know good by doing, not talking (he did note the irony of teaching a class about this), and other such topics. Eventually he told a story that struck me as very similar to what you describe. He said he met a bunch of Cistercian monks and talked with them a while and that the most interesting thing about them was that they seemed to hold no views about the world. They were supposed to be catholic, but they didn't pray anymore, they didn't seem to care about abortion (as an issue, not that they took a side), they didn't make any assumptions about god's shape. It was radically different from the popular conception of monks. The professor said that the only thing that they believed in was that god was present, and that the universe was a wondrous thing to behold. They just basked in the glory of existence. This surprised me, because I thought that the thinking of the most religious people would be radically different from the perspective of science. Both ask why, and have intellectual integrity about it. The major difference between the two is that science constantly asks "how?". My professor said that the monks acted kind of like they were stoned. Perhaps the true difference between the two prespectives is that the monks are on downers and the scientists are on uppers :-).
      - coffeemug 18y ago
        Prolonged isolation and meditation will do that to you. I twice spent a week in a Buddhist retreat, meditating under the guidance of monks from Burma pretty much all day long (well, at least I was supposed to, but I made friends with other people on the retreat...) Even without following all the rules you would be surprised what kind of amazing changes can go on in your mind in only one week. It does feel like you're stoned, only every day the trip is completely different. I cannot begin to imagine what happens after years of doing this. Science studies the objective - if other people can't observe an event then it's outside of scientific discourse. Monks do the exact opposite and study the subjective - their own minds. You can't have other people observe your thoughts, but you can talk about them and verify that the processes you go through are similar to the processes of other people. Monastic lifestyle is absolutely fascinating, from the first glance it might seem incredibly boring. I think of the two retreats as some of the most interesting moments in my life. It's at the very least as fun to do as starting a startup or going to a university.
- cowmoo 18y ago
  Given that someone before had offered a compelling Christian perspective, I shall give the existentialist perspective on the same matter. "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." - Albert Camus, from "The Myth of Sysiphus"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus) Existentialists such as Camus or Satre would tell you that the universe is an "absurd" and cold place, dictated by the physics of clashing atoms, indifferent to human ideals such as compassion and justice. Human life is "absurd" because while some may subscribe to hedonism to escape the indifferent reality, while other follow some arbitrary set of institutionalized ethics for either hopes of after-life or external validation from society - when the facts remain, everyday we are one day closer to our death, which spells the ceasing of our consciousness and hence, the ceasing of any meanings of our lives because the lofty ideals such as the difference you made for your kids, your family, your community are still "absurd" man-made ideals (just ask the loyal GM employees who've been laid off, or a recently divorced person). Much of our existential anxiety derives from our reluctance to confront our "absurd" reality or to make it "un-absurd" (i.e., we think that life's unfair, we can code better than Mark Zuckerberg in php and if we were at the right place and the right time, we could have been the Facebook billionaire; so we are going to work hard now, at another Web 2.0 startup). When, in fact, it's just that only in an "absurd" universe's arbitrary lottery, Zuckerberg hits the power ball while you are relegated to mundane, boring 9-5 code monkey job for the rest of your life - no matter how harder you work or how smarter you are than Zuckerberg. Eventually, by your failures alone, you'll begin to even doubt that you are not as smart than Zuckerberg. Sounds depressing? But Camus/Satre would say, only truth could set you free (besides you always knew it in the back of your head). The world is an indifferent, uncaring place - it sounds horrible, but it means you alone are in control of the meanings in your life. "Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world ... The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without hope. However, the absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt." In the end of his essay, Camus declares that "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" for his action of trying to defy death and the gods should by itself satisfy him (gods condemned Sisyphus to his futile labor because he defied death). Translated to startup's or any other modern endeavor, we must confront with the absurdness of our fate (probability says that you will never win the Nobel Prize, start up, literary lottery) but yet constantly defy the "absurdness" (keep trying hard at our goals anyway), because the mere act of constantly trying to defy the universe and create our own values is in of itself meaningful and satiating. "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
bpyne 18y ago
Your observation about perfectionism's root is astute. However, ego is a pale imitation of internal self-acceptance but is often mistaken for it. We still need to have enough wisdom to know that v1.0 is probably not as good as it can be while v10.0 is probably as good as it will be.
Eliezer 18y ago
No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. Not everything that sounds Deeply Wise is actually true. Try doing math with imperfect proofs and see how long it takes to arrive at a contradiction. Ariane 5 blew up thanks to a floating-point error. Some things in life require perfection. The error lies in applying the same standard to things that don't.
- kirse 18y ago
  I can't tell if this is a joke or serious. Either way, what you're saying here is that someone who does a math problem the right way is a perfectionist. That's correct in one sense of the word, however, under this specific context where we are discussing "perfectionism", doing a math problem the right way does not make one a "perfectionist".
  - yters 18y ago
    Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism. That can be quite hard. There are a large number of things in our modern world where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous. Space flight is one area, finances is another, weapons targeting a third, etc. Great art is also known by its perfection.
    - jfarmer 18y ago
      "Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism." Oh, I don't know about that. Mathematicians obsess over the "beauty" of a proof as much as hackers/programmers obsess over the "beauty" of their code. For some proving it the ugly way is insufficient.
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      Space flight is one area [where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous]. No. Perfectionism has been the single leading cause of every spaceflight "disaster". http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf A final area needing cultural change to achieve lower launch costs is one that cuts across virtually every part of government and the aerospace industry that is involved in space system development and operations. [...] Fear of failure, and the consequent lack of tolerance for it, dominates the thinking of many engineers and aerospace managers to the point of having major effect on the design and operation of space systems. [...] Today’s space leaders in this country need to recapture the spirit and vision of bold adventurism and risk acceptance to open avenues for reductions in space system costs and new space program starts. This will require strong courage by space managers as well as politicians to weather the storms of inevitable failures and continue to press forward. To help ameliorate the emotional, political, and financial impact of failures, the launching of cargo and the launching of people should be forever separated as soon as possible. As the cost of space launch comes down, launches (at least those that are unmanned) will become more routine and more plentiful. This frequent and common unmanned launch activity will allow any occasional accident that does occur to be treated with no more significance than any other accident that does not involve a loss of life or injury to people, or damage to the environment.

by kirse 18y ago

ruby_roo 18y ago

How does one accept themselves for what they are? How does that work exactly? And what does it mean to have accepted yourself for who you are? Serious question. I just get the impression that we have different ideas of what this means, and if we could be more definitive, the 'how to' should become obvious. This is something I struggle with personally, so I'm very interested to see what others say.

kirse 18y ago
-- This is something I struggle with personally Don't worry, you're not alone, every single person does. -- How does one accept themselves for what they are? This is such a deep question that I honestly can't provide an easy answer, and it would be foolish of me to claim that I knew an easy answer. When I say self-acceptance, I'm talking about being entirely at peace with one's self and being completely content in life (true happiness). Self-acceptance is something that is unique to everyone's own personal situation. Your troubles are different than mine, and my experiences are different than yours. So what you might have to overcome was easy for me, and what I have to overcome may be easy for you. Nevertheless, since you asked, I personally find I am most at peace with myself through Christianity. I believe that I'm placed here on Earth with a purpose and a plan, and can completely accept myself (faults and all) because I have a God that accepts and loves me unconditionally for who I am, imperfections and all. It really is that simple, and it becomes more self-evident every day that it just plain works. While religion hardly goes well over the net, I think this board is intelligent enough to understand this one thing: It is often said that religion is a crutch, but everyone needs a crutch to get through life. For me, the thing that delivers an unshakeable self-acceptance and true happiness is following Christianity. Good luck on your search, many others are on your path, including myself. =)
- coffeemug 18y ago
  Actually, if you're sufficiently intelligent and open-minded, you're bound to eventually run into religion. Not necessarily in a sense that you'll accept that an Abrahamic God (or some other gods) created the universe, but in a sense that you'll wonder about what it must be like to view the world from that point of view. The real religious thinkers were philosophers a world apart from how many on the internet perceive the religious right.
  - SapphireSun 18y ago
    That's a great lead in to something I really wanted to discuss on HN. I was in my ethics class today and my professor started talking about plato's cave allegory, how one can only know good by doing, not talking (he did note the irony of teaching a class about this), and other such topics. Eventually he told a story that struck me as very similar to what you describe. He said he met a bunch of Cistercian monks and talked with them a while and that the most interesting thing about them was that they seemed to hold no views about the world. They were supposed to be catholic, but they didn't pray anymore, they didn't seem to care about abortion (as an issue, not that they took a side), they didn't make any assumptions about god's shape. It was radically different from the popular conception of monks. The professor said that the only thing that they believed in was that god was present, and that the universe was a wondrous thing to behold. They just basked in the glory of existence. This surprised me, because I thought that the thinking of the most religious people would be radically different from the perspective of science. Both ask why, and have intellectual integrity about it. The major difference between the two is that science constantly asks "how?". My professor said that the monks acted kind of like they were stoned. Perhaps the true difference between the two prespectives is that the monks are on downers and the scientists are on uppers :-).
    - coffeemug 18y ago
      Prolonged isolation and meditation will do that to you. I twice spent a week in a Buddhist retreat, meditating under the guidance of monks from Burma pretty much all day long (well, at least I was supposed to, but I made friends with other people on the retreat...) Even without following all the rules you would be surprised what kind of amazing changes can go on in your mind in only one week. It does feel like you're stoned, only every day the trip is completely different. I cannot begin to imagine what happens after years of doing this. Science studies the objective - if other people can't observe an event then it's outside of scientific discourse. Monks do the exact opposite and study the subjective - their own minds. You can't have other people observe your thoughts, but you can talk about them and verify that the processes you go through are similar to the processes of other people. Monastic lifestyle is absolutely fascinating, from the first glance it might seem incredibly boring. I think of the two retreats as some of the most interesting moments in my life. It's at the very least as fun to do as starting a startup or going to a university.
cowmoo 18y ago
Given that someone before had offered a compelling Christian perspective, I shall give the existentialist perspective on the same matter. "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." - Albert Camus, from "The Myth of Sysiphus"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus) Existentialists such as Camus or Satre would tell you that the universe is an "absurd" and cold place, dictated by the physics of clashing atoms, indifferent to human ideals such as compassion and justice. Human life is "absurd" because while some may subscribe to hedonism to escape the indifferent reality, while other follow some arbitrary set of institutionalized ethics for either hopes of after-life or external validation from society - when the facts remain, everyday we are one day closer to our death, which spells the ceasing of our consciousness and hence, the ceasing of any meanings of our lives because the lofty ideals such as the difference you made for your kids, your family, your community are still "absurd" man-made ideals (just ask the loyal GM employees who've been laid off, or a recently divorced person). Much of our existential anxiety derives from our reluctance to confront our "absurd" reality or to make it "un-absurd" (i.e., we think that life's unfair, we can code better than Mark Zuckerberg in php and if we were at the right place and the right time, we could have been the Facebook billionaire; so we are going to work hard now, at another Web 2.0 startup). When, in fact, it's just that only in an "absurd" universe's arbitrary lottery, Zuckerberg hits the power ball while you are relegated to mundane, boring 9-5 code monkey job for the rest of your life - no matter how harder you work or how smarter you are than Zuckerberg. Eventually, by your failures alone, you'll begin to even doubt that you are not as smart than Zuckerberg. Sounds depressing? But Camus/Satre would say, only truth could set you free (besides you always knew it in the back of your head). The world is an indifferent, uncaring place - it sounds horrible, but it means you alone are in control of the meanings in your life. "Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world ... The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without hope. However, the absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt." In the end of his essay, Camus declares that "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" for his action of trying to defy death and the gods should by itself satisfy him (gods condemned Sisyphus to his futile labor because he defied death). Translated to startup's or any other modern endeavor, we must confront with the absurdness of our fate (probability says that you will never win the Nobel Prize, start up, literary lottery) but yet constantly defy the "absurdness" (keep trying hard at our goals anyway), because the mere act of constantly trying to defy the universe and create our own values is in of itself meaningful and satiating. "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

bpyne 18y ago

Your observation about perfectionism's root is astute. However, ego is a pale imitation of internal self-acceptance but is often mistaken for it. We still need to have enough wisdom to know that v1.0 is probably not as good as it can be while v10.0 is probably as good as it will be.

Eliezer 18y ago

No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. Not everything that sounds Deeply Wise is actually true. Try doing math with imperfect proofs and see how long it takes to arrive at a contradiction. Ariane 5 blew up thanks to a floating-point error. Some things in life require perfection. The error lies in applying the same standard to things that don't.

kirse 18y ago
I can't tell if this is a joke or serious. Either way, what you're saying here is that someone who does a math problem the right way is a perfectionist. That's correct in one sense of the word, however, under this specific context where we are discussing "perfectionism", doing a math problem the right way does not make one a "perfectionist".
- yters 18y ago
  Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism. That can be quite hard. There are a large number of things in our modern world where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous. Space flight is one area, finances is another, weapons targeting a third, etc. Great art is also known by its perfection.
  - jfarmer 18y ago
    "Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism." Oh, I don't know about that. Mathematicians obsess over the "beauty" of a proof as much as hackers/programmers obsess over the "beauty" of their code. For some proving it the ugly way is insufficient.
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    Space flight is one area [where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous]. No. Perfectionism has been the single leading cause of every spaceflight "disaster". http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf A final area needing cultural change to achieve lower launch costs is one that cuts across virtually every part of government and the aerospace industry that is involved in space system development and operations. [...] Fear of failure, and the consequent lack of tolerance for it, dominates the thinking of many engineers and aerospace managers to the point of having major effect on the design and operation of space systems. [...] Today’s space leaders in this country need to recapture the spirit and vision of bold adventurism and risk acceptance to open avenues for reductions in space system costs and new space program starts. This will require strong courage by space managers as well as politicians to weather the storms of inevitable failures and continue to press forward. To help ameliorate the emotional, political, and financial impact of failures, the launching of cargo and the launching of people should be forever separated as soon as possible. As the cost of space launch comes down, launches (at least those that are unmanned) will become more routine and more plentiful. This frequent and common unmanned launch activity will allow any occasional accident that does occur to be treated with no more significance than any other accident that does not involve a loss of life or injury to people, or damage to the environment.