Disney changed Zootopia's name to Zootropolis in the UK and other territories because they couldn't secure the trademark for "Zootopia," partly due to a Danish zoo already owning it, and in Germany, it was changed to Zoomania to avoid confusion with a children's book. The name change was a legal necessity to allow for release in different markets, despite Disney's initial explanation that it was to create a unique title for those audiences.
If you are not failing every once in a while, you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Really. This applies on both a civilization level and a personal level.
Failure is an option. It tells you where the limits are.
Too often, we avoid judgment, avoid criticism, but our critics contain the best information for self-improvement.
Too often do we remain in our comfort zones, afraid to venture even slightly beyond.
I love the image of Starship rocket in this article. Starship is the literal physical embodiment of this philosophy. A rocket that pushes its own limits with every flight, a rocket that, in a sense, tries to fail because that it the only way to create a machine capable of operating on the edge of what is possible within the laws of physics.
Be careful about glorifying failure. It's good to seek bottom-up feedback by testing out your hypotheses -- that's how the scientific method works. But the better your hypothesis, the better. Try not to fail. Failure is not success. It's still failure.
The proverbs on this conflict. One proverb says, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. But another proverb says, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. (Then you have the middle ground: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.)
Even though we can learn from personal failures, better than failing ourselves is to learn from the failures of others. The most successful people are always asking others for their opinion. The most successful people always search the literature to learn from it.
And the most successful people run experiments when the stakes are low. We only get so many chances at life, and success tends to build on success. Best not to waste your best chances on failure.
Unfortunately biologists got us thinking wrong about failure with their theory that evolution comes from maximizing the number of cycles of random mutation and natural selection. That's false. Doing that leads downward not upward. That's the law of entropy. Trial and error won't work if it's blind. You must make your trials as good as possible and learn as much as possible from every error.
Someone who understands this instinctively is Donald Trump. I use him as an example too much so people think I'm a fan but I'm not. Same with Elon Musk. Both these men can teach us a lot about success and failure if we are willing to learn.
Try everything but should we proceed if the costs are too high? In Sydney they are going ahead with a $93 billion project high speed rail that will only travel less than 200km, that's nearly half a billion per km? and only connect on small satellite city and one airport. Along this same 200km stretch of coast we have 2 satellite cites that want to be connected with each port being the commercial and cultural hub why not try supper fast ferries. If they were to build Surface effect ships with a central divide to counter parallel roll they could travel from hub to hub at approximately the same time even in rough seas for a tiny fraction of the cost. We could be innovators in tech with ferries run on batteries and put that $93 billion into a Sydney to Melbourne SFT which is one of the busiest domestic routes in the world (while servicing our second airport on the way). A 100kmh Surface Effect Ship that rides above large swells and can transport hundreds of passengers a trip and as one person put it "it is like being on a jet liner over the ocean" Wish we could try everything.
I just looked it up! That seems like a weirdly subtle name change, I wonder why they did it..?
Google AI says:
Disney changed Zootopia's name to Zootropolis in the UK and other territories because they couldn't secure the trademark for "Zootopia," partly due to a Danish zoo already owning it, and in Germany, it was changed to Zoomania to avoid confusion with a children's book. The name change was a legal necessity to allow for release in different markets, despite Disney's initial explanation that it was to create a unique title for those audiences.
Thank you for looking that up Vaughn.
An excellent piece Jordan.
If you are not failing every once in a while, you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Really. This applies on both a civilization level and a personal level.
Failure is an option. It tells you where the limits are.
Too often, we avoid judgment, avoid criticism, but our critics contain the best information for self-improvement.
Too often do we remain in our comfort zones, afraid to venture even slightly beyond.
I love the image of Starship rocket in this article. Starship is the literal physical embodiment of this philosophy. A rocket that pushes its own limits with every flight, a rocket that, in a sense, tries to fail because that it the only way to create a machine capable of operating on the edge of what is possible within the laws of physics.
Zootropolis? This must be an instance of a different title in British English markets? Hahaha
Be careful about glorifying failure. It's good to seek bottom-up feedback by testing out your hypotheses -- that's how the scientific method works. But the better your hypothesis, the better. Try not to fail. Failure is not success. It's still failure.
The proverbs on this conflict. One proverb says, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. But another proverb says, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. (Then you have the middle ground: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.)
Even though we can learn from personal failures, better than failing ourselves is to learn from the failures of others. The most successful people are always asking others for their opinion. The most successful people always search the literature to learn from it.
And the most successful people run experiments when the stakes are low. We only get so many chances at life, and success tends to build on success. Best not to waste your best chances on failure.
Unfortunately biologists got us thinking wrong about failure with their theory that evolution comes from maximizing the number of cycles of random mutation and natural selection. That's false. Doing that leads downward not upward. That's the law of entropy. Trial and error won't work if it's blind. You must make your trials as good as possible and learn as much as possible from every error.
Someone who understands this instinctively is Donald Trump. I use him as an example too much so people think I'm a fan but I'm not. Same with Elon Musk. Both these men can teach us a lot about success and failure if we are willing to learn.
Try everything but should we proceed if the costs are too high? In Sydney they are going ahead with a $93 billion project high speed rail that will only travel less than 200km, that's nearly half a billion per km? and only connect on small satellite city and one airport. Along this same 200km stretch of coast we have 2 satellite cites that want to be connected with each port being the commercial and cultural hub why not try supper fast ferries. If they were to build Surface effect ships with a central divide to counter parallel roll they could travel from hub to hub at approximately the same time even in rough seas for a tiny fraction of the cost. We could be innovators in tech with ferries run on batteries and put that $93 billion into a Sydney to Melbourne SFT which is one of the busiest domestic routes in the world (while servicing our second airport on the way). A 100kmh Surface Effect Ship that rides above large swells and can transport hundreds of passengers a trip and as one person put it "it is like being on a jet liner over the ocean" Wish we could try everything.