clintirwin:

It is beginning to look like some physicists made a mistake in 2011. Their claim was that test results indicated neutrinos might move faster than light. It might seem particularly embarrassing if it turns out that the whole thing may have come from a loose cable. It was no small claim. The idea of anything moving faster than light in physics might be comparable to the Vatican announcing, “Sorry, it turns out Jesus was not the Son of God, just a rather interesting fellow who ran into a bad day in Jerusalem. You can all go home, now.” But this is not religion, it is science. Where religion strives for perfection, science is driven by mistakes. In religion, a contradiction to doctrine is suppressed, while in science it prompts exploration. The claim immediately resulted in testing, testing, re-testing and new proposals. If the data could be shown to be above reproach, then a central tenant of physics would have to be abandoned, no matter how impossible it might seem. In science, a new idea is an invitation to tear it down. If it still stands no matter how much evidence you throw against it, then and only then is it a good idea, which may still be abandoned at any point for a better one. Mistakes are good for science, and this one is no exception. Even if it resulted from something so silly as a loose cable, it is a great lesson in what separates science from religion.  

To me this is larger than science or religion, though, because I see around me a society that is terrified of making mistakes. You have to be a big hit on the first try. You can see it in helicopter parents hovering over their kids in desperation to prepare their “genius” child for the right preschools, and all the right schools following that point until they graduate. You can see it with women and girls throwing around the words “perfect” and “flawless” when they are looking at magazines full of models and interior decors. You can see it in the profound neurosis most guys experience in approaching a girl, because they are supposed to come up with the absolute perfect thing to say at the right time. Kids should roll around in mud. Girls should look whatever the hell way they want. Living rooms should look lived in. Guys should say dumb things. Mistakes make life interesting and learning from them makes life better. You never really love somebody for their perfections, and you never learn much from getting something right the first time.

I don’t think it is any coincidence that the most religious places are those where the punishments for making mistakes are the most harsh, like the Deep South. By the time they are locking someone up for life or putting them to death, a lifetime of mistakes has gone by. How many little things in childhood were elevated to crimes with severe penalties until becoming a criminal was just meeting the expectations that were formed at the beginning? Southerners are still pretty solid spankers, major proponents of consequences over solutions. Maybe it would be fine if it produced high rates of achievement and low rates of crime, but the Deep South leads the nation in the opposite direction — in poverty and murder, for example. Harsh punishment produces fear and shame, which makes one inclined to displace blame for a mistake, rather than own up to it and learn from it. This very Southern way of doing things explains someone like George W. Bush, a man whose blunders were epic, yet he is still incapable of seeing almost any of them. As the nation continues to become more religious and more punishing toward mistakes — more Southern fried, you might say — the bad cables and botched neutrino-counts of science become ever more important as object lessons in the most productive way to deal with problems. Embarrassment and imperfection are a part of life and no mistake is ever as bad as the way it is dealt with. The difference is that between reasonable acceptance of the facts and a sober move toward solutions, or the dead end of denial, displacement of blame and suppression. Learn how to make things better, or never learn anything.  

Excellent read.