On being wrong

I’d been planning this note before Elon Musk went on a Russian propaganda bender yesterday, so it’s even more relevant than before.

I like this piece, Unreasonable people by DHH. The main idea is that brilliant people in one area will likely be wrong in other areas. We as a society have to allow people to be “wrong” in order to make progress.

Evolution and development happen via trial and error, making mistakes, learning from them and the freedom to get things wrong.

This is the right approach, from Illia Ponomarenko:

People - Elon Musk simply said something stupid on Twitter regarding a thing he has very little idea about.
A failed shitposting attempt deserves getting ridiculed into oblivion, but there’s no point making an enemy out of him now.

Or this summary from more official Ukrainian sources:

🇺🇦 president Zelenskyy has already responded reinforcing the idea that we should make allies and not enemies – yes, Elon made a couple ill-thought-out tweets, but Starlink is still helping 🇺🇦 army and civilians.

Or as Arestovych put it – “with all the respect for a particular sub-group of Ukrainian intellectuals (including some from the beloved 🇺🇦 National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) and people offended by Musk’s tweets, 🇺🇦 cannot afford fixating on “cancel culture”.

Ukrainians must be pragmatic and smart in identifying their true enemies and the battles worth fighting.

In short we can and should have good faith disagreements.