FROWN

May 8th, 2020

Given a sea of smilie faces, and one frown, we will pick up on that frown far faster than if the situation were reversed and there were one smilie face in a sea of frowns.

Why?

Evolution has primed us to be concerned with threats.  Those who weren’t concerned with threats, and who weren’t quick to pick up on them didn’t make it.

And thus, we are left with an obnoxious ability to focus unnecessarily on the negative.   This might seem like just bad luck, but as it has served us before, it still serves us.  We developed this tendency in order to learn. There is more to learn from the bad than there is the good.  This extends far beyond threats to our survival. 

It’s far easier to figure out what’s wrong with something you’ve built than to suss out why it’s working well.  A broken down car has a finite set of problems, but once fixed, the reasons why it charges forward are myriad and intensely complicated compared to a few problems where the whole process gets hung up.

As much as we fear and spurn criticism, it contains the kernel for our most important and our most efficient way of improving. 

Our aim isn’t so much to create things that receive no criticism as it is to become comfortable and welcoming of such criticism.