What Mistakes Tell

I often miss what a person says and can't catch well what he or she means. Everyday I misread what a today's newspaper reports and takes much time to understand it. I must be writing a wrong spell of English words when I am blogging just like this. (If you find it, tell me in secret.)

I happended to see an issue of the Yale Economic Review have an intriguing article;

Great Minds in Economics: Paul Samuelson
by Mark Schneider

...People often view mistakes in a bad light. But Paul Samuelson, like economics itself, has recognized that mistakes are an inevitable, if not necessary, step.

...Mistakes may be the result of negligence, but they can also be the result of extreme effort in the search for truth. The key is the relationship between the two. Samuelson not only recognizes the value in falling to get up again, he promotes it. “My own credo,” he said proudly “is ‘Be wrong! Yes, but don’t stay wrong.’”

Paul Samuelson is a prominent American economist and once had a great influence on the development and the practice of economics. He won the Novel Prize for his historial works on economics. Some economists say Samuelson is the God of modern economics.

He was the economist whose name I first knew when I began to study economics at university. However I've read none of his articles and known just only his name though I majored in neoclassical economics at graduate school.

...Mistakes may be the result of negligence, but they can also be the result of extreme effort in the search for truth. It's a very insightful statement. This is the comment I like best.

In my case, mistakes may not be the result of effort in the search for truth but the result of negligence.