Posts Tagged ‘mistakes’
“The trouble with most folks isn’t so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain’t so”*…
From Kai Brach, in his nifty newsletter Dense Discovery, an appreciation of an Isaac Asimov essay from 1988: “The Relativity of Wrong” (a lovely riff on a point also taken up by Karl Popper)…
… it’s a welcome dose of nuance in this era of absolutist thinking. When knowingness tricks our brains into certainty, Asimov’s wonderfully nerdy piece demonstrates that right and wrong are far less binary than we may think.
The piece begins with Asimov addressing a young English literature student who’d written to scold him for his scientific arrogance. The student argues that every generation thinks they’ve got it sorted, and every generation gets proven wrong. Therefore, our current knowledge is just as flawed as flat-earth theory. But Asimov won’t have it:
“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
He then makes his point clear through a series of delightful examples. Like spelling:
“How do you spell ‘sugar’? Suppose Alice spells it p-q-z-z-f and Genevieve spells it s-h-u-g-e-r. Both are wrong, but is there any doubt that Alice is wronger than Genevieve? For that matter, I think it is possible to argue that Genevieve’s spelling is superior to the ‘right’ one. Or suppose you spell ‘sugar’: s-u-c-r-o-s-e, or C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁. Strictly speaking, you are wrong each time, but you’re displaying a certain knowledge of the subject beyond conventional spelling.”
The same logic applies to mathematics: “Suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an integer. You’d be right, wouldn’t you? Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an even integer. You’d be righter. Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = 3.999. Wouldn’t you be nearly right?”
The flat-earth idea is a great (and again timely?) case study for Asimov’s theory. The notion that the earth was flat wasn’t the product of ancient stupidity but reasonable observation given the tools available. The earth’s actual curvature is roughly 0.000126 per mile – practically indistinguishable from zero without sophisticated instruments.
“So although the flat-Earth theory is only slightly wrong and is a credit to its inventors, all things considered, it is wrong enough to be discarded in favour of the spherical-Earth theory.”
What he’s really arguing for is intellectual humility. Scientific theories don’t flip-flop wildly from flat earth to cubic earth to doughnut-shaped earth. Instead:
“What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.”
We seem to live in a world of zero-sum thinking, where nuance often gets steamrolled by the satisfying simplicity of being right. I want to remember Asimov’s framework the next time I’m certain someone else is wrong – that most disagreements aren’t between absolute truth and utter falsehood, but between different degrees of incompleteness…
On the dangers of “knowingness” and absolutism: Isaac Asimov’s “The Relativity of Wrong,” from @densediscovery.bsky.social.
Asimov’s essay is here.
See also: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement” and “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances.”
(Image above: source)
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As we rethink, we might recall that this date in 1957 was “E Day,” the introduction of the Edsel automobile. Name for Edsel Ford, son of company founder Henry Ford, Edsels were developed in an effort to give Ford a fourth brand (beyond Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln) to gain additional market share from Chrysler and General Motors. It was the first new brand introduction by an American automaker since the 1939 launch of Mercury and 1956 launch of Continental (which ended and merged into Lincoln after 1957).
Introduced in a recession that catastrophically affected sales of medium-priced cars, Edsels were considered overhyped, unattractive, distinguished by a vertical grille said to resemble a horse collar, and low quality.
No automobile has been so widely anticipated nor so quickly rejected as the Ford Edsel (with the possible recent exception of the Tesla Cybertruck). Within two months of its highly publicized launch, the Edsel became a rolling joke– and has stood as a metphor for disastrous product launch failures since.
Recognizing this (and following a loss of over $250 million [equivalent to $2.66 billion in 2024 dollars] on development, manufacturing, and marketing on the model line), Ford quietly discontinued the Edsel brand before 1960.
“I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being — forgive me — rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.”*…
All of us make mistakes. But some of us are in a position to make more consequential mistakes than others. Ava Benny-Morrison and Sridhar Natarajan illustrate…
The indictment reads like a cinematic plot: A Harvard Fellow and another activist allegedly wanted to buy AK-47s, Stinger missiles and grenades to topple South Sudan’s government. What they lacked was enough cash.
Now, Jane Street co-founder Robert Granieri concedes he put up the money — saying he was duped into funding the alleged coup plot. The role played by the wealthy recluse behind a Wall Street trading powerhouse emerges from the US prosecution of Peter Ajak, the Harvard Fellow who was accused last year of scheming to install himself atop the East African nation.
“Granieri is a longtime supporter of human rights causes,” his lawyer said in a statement. “In this case, the person Rob thought was a human rights activist defrauded Rob and lied about his intentions.”
The case came to light in March 2024, when federal prosecutors in Arizona charged Ajak and Abraham Keech with conspiring to illegally export arms to their home country. Both have pleaded not guilty.
While prosecutors haven’t said where the defendants obtained several million dollars for an attempt to buy military-grade weaponry, Ajak’s lawyers pointed to Granieri in a recent filing — saying the 53-year-old financier was “vital to the plan.”
“Without the significant financing that Mr. Granieri could and agreed to provide, the alleged conspiracy would have been impossible,” they wrote in the document filed in late May.
The lawyers accused authorities of selectively prosecuting two Black men, even though support also came from Granieri and Garry Kasparov, the chess champion and prominent Russian dissident. The US hasn’t accused either of them of wrongdoing.
Kasparov came to know Ajak when the chessmaster was chair of the Human Rights Foundation. He later connected Ajak with Granieri, according to people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified discussing the legal case…
… To industry outsiders, Jane Street is probably best known as the former employer of Sam Bankman-Fried, before he left to build a crypto empire that imploded.
But across Wall Street, the market-making firm is a source of fascination — known for turning mathematicians into traders who mint profits. It generated $20.5 billion in net trading revenue last year, helping it leap past the likes of Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.
Despite Jane Street’s ascent in the industry, Granieri has kept a low profile. He’s one of the firm’s four founders — and the only one still there. Yet he’s not featured on the company’s website, and public photos of him are scarce.
The firm’s success has allowed Granieri to pour money into other ventures and causes. He helped build the Scarlet Pearl, a casino resort on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, was a major financial backer for Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, and has donated to the Equal Justice Initiative and Institute for Justice. He also channeled money into causes Kasparov backed around the globe…
The remarkable tale of a secretive financier’s funding of a planned coup in the world’s youngest country: “Jane Street Boss Says He Was Duped Into Funding AK-47s for Coup,” gift article from @bloomberg.com.
See also “BCG modelled plan to ‘relocate’ Palestinians from Gaza” (a gift article from @financialtimes.com):
Boston Consulting Group modelled the costs of “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza and entered into a multimillion-dollar contract to help launch an aid scheme for the shattered enclave, a Financial Times investigation has found. The consulting firm helped establish the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and supported a related security company but then disavowed the project, which has been marred by the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, and fired two partners last month. BCG’s role was more extensive than it has publicly described, according to people familiar with the project, stretching over seven months, covering more than $4mn of contracted work and involving internal discussion at senior levels of the firm.
[Two months before BCG took the gig, US President Donald Trump had suggested emptying the shattered strip of its 2.2mn people so it could be rebuilt as the “Riviera of the Middle East” — a plan rights groups and UN officials equated to ethnic cleansing. As for the disaterously ineffective GHF, the UN has described it as a “fig leaf” for Israeli war aims and humanitarian groups have refused to co-operate with it.]
More than a dozen BCG staff worked directly on the evolving project — codenamed “Aurora” — between October and late May. Senior figures at BCG discussed the initiative, including the firm’s chief risk officer and the head of its social impact practice.
The BCG team also built a financial model for the postwar reconstruction of Gaza, which included cost estimates for relocating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the strip and the economic impact of such a mass displacement. One scenario estimated more than 500,000 Gazans would leave the enclave with “relocation packages” worth $9,000 per person, or around $5bn in total.
BCG said the senior figures were repeatedly misled on the scope of the work by the partners running the project. Referring to the work on postwar Gaza, BCG said: “The lead partner was categorically told no, and he violated this directive. We disavow this work.”…
See also: “Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG.”
* “Albus Dumbledore” in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (by J.K. Rowling who doesn’t figure into this post as she has embraced, not denied her cultural/political funding/activities)
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As we think twice, we might recall that it was on this date in 2011 that, after 20 years of civil war, South Sudan gained its independence and seceded from Sudan.
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“Any typos in this email are on purpose actually”*…
Jennifer Sandlin on a gremlin we’ve all met…
The next time you make a mistake in your writing, or pick up something you’ve published and instantly spot a typo (argh!), don’t fret, it wasn’t your fault! Instead of taking on the shame of not proof-reading your work thoroughly enough, you can just point to Titivillus instead!
Who is Titivillus, you might ask? Well, he’s a demon who has long been blamed for, according to Princeton University’s Medieval Studies department, “slips and sins in song, speech, and writing.” In fact, Medieval Studies scholar Jan Ziolkowski, from Harvard University, traces his origins back to at least 1200, when he began showing up in paintings and sermons in medieval Europe and beyond. And he’s definitely got staying power, as he’s still beloved today in some circles. Princeton University provides this helpful overview of his origins and reach:
Thanks to today’s dominance of English, Titivillus is regarded as especially particular to medieval England, but he became commonplace far beyond the Continent and survived past the Middle Ages to appear in Rabelais, the earliest Slovak literature, Anatole France, Herman Melville, and W. H. Auden, before finally having a novel devoted to him in 1953. He remains unforgotten, a curio beloved among calligraphers and role-play gamers…
“Got typos? Blame Titivillus, the “medieval demon of typos” from @boingboing.net.
* Ryan Broderick– the tag line in his nifty newsletter, Garbage Day
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As we correct, we might ponder a very specific path, recalling that today– and every June 16– is Bloomsday, a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce (whose typos may or may not have been typos), during which the events of his novel Ulysses (the modern classic set on this date in 1904) are relived: Leopold Bloom goes about Dublin, Joyce’s immortalization of his first outing with Nora Barnacle, the woman who would eventually become his wife.
The first Bloomsday was observed on the 50th anniversary of the events in the novel, in 1954, when John Ryan (artist, critic, publican and founder of Envoy magazine) and the novelist Brian O’Nolan organized what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the Ulysses route. They were joined by Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, Tom Joyce (a dentist who, as Joyce’s cousin, represented the family interest), and AJ Leventhal (a lecturer in French at Trinity College, Dublin).
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals to discovery.”*…
Ed Simon on errata (and other errors) in literature…
… The King James Version of the Bible has exactly 783,137 words, but unfortunately for the London print shop of Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, official purveyors to King Charles I, their 1631 edition left out three crucial letters, one crucial word—”not.” As such, their version of Exodus 20:14 read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Their royal patron was not amused. This edition was later deemed the “Wicked Bible.”
Literature’s history is a history of mistakes, errors, misapprehensions, simple typos. It’s the shadow narrative of expression—how we fail because of sloppiness, or ignorance, or simple tiredness. Blessed are the copyeditors, for theirs is a war of eternal attrition. Nothing done by humans is untouched by such fallenness, for to err is the universal lot of all of us. Authors make mistakes, as do editors, publishers, printers (and readers).
If error were simply an issue of a wrong comma here or an incorrect word there it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting, but mistakes undergird our lives, even our universe. They can be detrimental, beneficial, neutral. When Lockheed Martin designed the Mars Climate Orbiter using American units and NASA assumed that they’d used the metric system instead, a discrepancy that resulted in that satellite crashing into the red dust of the fourth planet from the sun—that was a mistake. And when the physician Alexander Fleming left out a culture plate which got contaminated, and he noticed the flourishing of a blue mold that turned out to be penicillin—that was a mistake. Errors in how people hear phonemes are what lead to the development of new languages; mistakes in an animal’s DNA propel evolution; getting lost can render new discoveries. Sometimes the flaw is that which is most beautiful.
Certainly, there are no shortage of them…
A wonderfully amusing history, and richly illuminating consideration of literary mistakes through the ages: “How Many Errorrs Are in This Essay?,” from @WithEdSimon in @The_Millions.
Vaguely apposite (and also really fascinating): “Panic at the Library.”
* James Joyce, Ulysses
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As we muse on misprints, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that The Beatles’ record label, Apple Records, released its first single, “Hey Jude.”
The label was founded… as a creative outlet for the band and as a way to reduce their tax burden. They choose the name and image of a Granny Smith apple because in Paul McCartney’s mind, a green apple signified creative freedom and independence from commercial interests. The record was unique because it featured the image of a Granny Smith apple on side-A and the same apple sliced in half on side-B. But according to The Independent, the song was almost never released because some record executives thought that the image looked pornagraphic. In a letter sent to Apple boss Ron Kass, it said, “Here’s a wild and unanticipated problem to brighten up your day. I just received a call from a very large and influential jack jobber in the western United States. He opened the conversation by saying, ‘Are you guys serious? Do you know what you’re doing? Do you really intend to sell products bearing the new Apple label?’” He said that the Apple label was completely pornographic and the graphic nature of the art was noticed by all of his employees. He doubted that record store chains would want to stock such a record. Not only was he wrong [the single sold 8 million copies], but there is no evidence that the band had intended using a controversial image.
source
Your correspondent leaves it to the reader to deduce the supposed pornographic image. If, like him, you are stumped, see The Independent article linked in the quote above.
“There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t”*…
Typos can be embarrassing. They can also be costly. And not just for those individuals whose jobs depend on knowing the difference between “it’s” and “its” or where a comma is most appropriate. In 2013, bauble-loving Texans got the deal of a lifetime when a misprint in a Macy’s mailer advertised a $1500 necklace for just $47. (It should have read $497.) It didn’t take long for the entire inventory to be zapped, at a loss of $450 a pop to the retail giant. (Not to mention plenty of faces as red as the star in the company’s logo.)
Google, on the other hand, loves a good typing transposition: Harvard University researchers claim that the company earns about $497 million each year from people mistyping the names of popular websites and landing on “typosquatter” sites … which just happen to be littered with Google ads…
From a NSFW travel agency ad to “the most expensive hyphen in history”– “10 very costly typos.”
* Jarod Kintz
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As we check our work, we might send carefully-edited birthday greetings to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, AKA Mark Twain; he was born on this date in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. One of the best-known writers and aphorists of his time and ours, his The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is consistently cited as a (if not indeed the) Great American Novel, at the same time that it is equally consistently the target of censors who would ban it from school and public libraries… but not for sloppy editing or typos: Clemens began his career as a newspaper man– first as a typesetter, then as a reporter, where he honed his copy editing skills. And he carried those skills with him into the use of new technologies: he was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.
Matthew Brady’s photo of Mark Twain
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