Friday's Unscientific Poll: Choices

[nanila]

Poll #21257 Choices

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 61

A couple of years ago, you made a poorly-informed decision. It becomes clear that your choice is going to have dire consequences for you and everyone around you. However, you've been handed a golden opportunity to roll back the clock and reverse the decision unilaterally, effectively resetting to the point you were at before you made that decision. All you have to do is admit your mistake. What do you do?

Own up to the mistake and avert the dire consequences.
58 (95.1%)

Adamantly refuse to acknowledge you have any option other than to carry on and subject yourself and everyone else to the dire consequences.
3 (4.9%)

Comments

[recessional]

But this is because I know for a fact my focus is on, you know, the success or failure of the ACTUAL ENTERPRISE. Not on my status viz the other persons involved in the fight to dominate said enterprise.

[davidgillon]

This. It almost needs a third option: Make strenuous efforts to ensure the blame falls on one of your subordinates, someone else's subordinates, or best of all, a rival.

[recessional]

Monkey status bullshit (aka the primate drive to retain status viz the rest of the troupe) will be and has traditionally been the death of us. sigh Our brains get convinced that losing status = DEATH, and then it's all over. And the older people are and the longer they've been in high level politics, the more likely this is to happen, as far as I can see.

[alexseanchai]

That and also, yeah, getting over myself enough to 'fess up, and dealing with the disapproving stares and whatnot, will fucking suck—but even ignoring how I'm not the only important person in the world, it's probably gonna be less suck to admit it and fix it than otherwise.

[recessional]

Sadly, they know that in some cases as long as they DON'T particularly care that other people are going to hell in a handbag, that's not even necessarily the case. It all depends on which power-group end up on top, and how they can spin it.

Which is part of the problem. Sigh

[hilarita]

*screams into the void*

[antisoppist]

Because I know I am inclined to be Answer B, with a talent for cutting off my nose to spite my face, I am really good at providing stompy two-year-olds who have painted themselves into a corner with a face-saving get-out clause that will allow them to back down with some remnant of pride intact. But I can't for the life of me (possibly literally) think of one in this case.

[alatefeline]

Thank you for this.

[thekumquat]

If this is related to current UK politics, then I did not make a mistake...

Trying very hard not to think about it atm. Which is a bit tricky because day job. Though all my management chain seem to be having similar issues.

[wohali]

Hardest thing I had to learn was to kill enough of my ego to be able to admit when I was wrong.

Now it feels like the easiest thing to do, and I rarely have trouble doing so. I am now equally baffled as to why other people don't make this leap...but pride is a strong motivator, I guess.

[alatefeline]

Fear. Fear of loss of face equaling loss of survival on some subconscious level of equivalence. Or fear of a trivial personal loss that is valued more highly than other people’s entire lives.

[wohali]

That reminds me of a key quote from a film I quite enjoyed, Waking Life:

"Which is the more universal human emotion: fear? or laziness?"

[fred_mouse]

The more people affected, the easier it is to admit the mistake. But I tend to try and admit mistakes as soon as I work out what is wrong, because that way I get help with fixing it.

[siliconshaman]

Me, I have impostor syndrome... I'm always convinced people are on to me, or about to figure out I have no clue what I'm doing.

So, owning up to a screw-up and being able to avert dire consequences as result. That would be a big fat WIN for me!!

[silveradept]

So long as I go back to that point knowing what I know from the bad future, I can hopefully avoid doing it again. This will be harder, of course, if I were any sort of politician, because politicians seem to have had any ability to remember drummed or of them.

[alatefeline]

Probably I would choose a third option so as not to lose the learning from experience while still fixing the damage; but of the two presented, definitely the first, if I understood the situation and myself well enough to grok the choices.

[sfred]

Indeed.