It's also easier to give forgiveness than permission, especially in an institutional context. Forgiveness after the fact doesn't imply approval of the act the way permission beforehand does.
It's also that asking for permission allows the manager to "preventively" re-arrange the project/effort/whatever you want permission for, and thus leads to failure.
You have to dig deeper and ask what makes asking for permission difficult.
In an institutional context when we ask for permission from higher ups, especially publicly, we put them on the spot to clarify some rule or make a pronouncement which rules will be enforced and which won't. Sometimes you have to break rules, or perversely are even expected to, just to get things done. Asking permission means the boss has to tell you that you cannot break the rule officially, even though they know the rule has to be broken for the task to be accomplished. So not only do they deny the permission, they also resent you for forcing them to make the pronouncement and preventing anyone in the near future from accomplishing the task at hand efficiently. In other words even as they respond with "No, Peter, you cannot bypass filling out 10 TPS reports just to fix this bug" in their head they are thinking "Why the fuck didn't you just do it. Why did you have to ask me about it in front of everyone..."
Large power structures usually have rules you cannot break, you can break if you want to, and perversely enough, you should or are expected to break. Winning or losing the politics game often comes down to simply understanding which rules belong to each set.
At risk of using management lingo, there's a big difference between one-way-door (decisions which are hard to undo) and two-way-door decisions (decisions which can be easily undone).
Asking for permission (or asking anything), in a complex domain is difficult and always carries a cost.
In two-way-door decisions, forgiveness IS easier. But an incorrect, one-way-door decision is hard to "forgive" ("accountability" and the like).
Well-run companies (e.g. Amazon) understand this very well and have processes to only require permission only in one-way-door decisions.
This is such a terrific point. Let's think of forgiveness and permission approaches as useful tools that work best in context, that do not have moral characteristics on their own. I wish this were at the top because it should be the context for every other top level post I've read.
I had never heard the phrases "one-way door" and "two-way door" in decision making until yesterday, and now this is the 2nd time I've seen it. The person who mentioned it to me yesterday works at Amazon. Funny coincidence...
I'm curious about how one decides whether a decision even is one-way or two-way? I can think of some contrived examples (demolishing a building is one-way, deciding where to get lunch today is two-way) but what about more complex and realistic examples? Is it that the cost to reverse that decision is so high that it's effectively a one-way choice? And can you make a one-way idea into a two-way idea in some scenarios?
I have seen this abused. A team member does whatever she thinks is best, and the rest now have to tag along because to communicate to all stakeholders that it was not a team decision and needs to be revisited is too costly.
That can be seen by some management as "getting things done". And quite often that person feels vindicated when her solution works.
But that person is not able to realize the cost of the mistrust of the team and detachment of the job nor to think about the possibility that the other solution not only have worked, but it will have been way better.
At my job, I have to arbitrate between team members and teams. I will flag anyone that decides to "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" and notify their manager. I don't like to work with people that think that they are so good that don't need to present their arguments like the rest.
So when going for forgiveness instead of permission, it is wise to think:
a) If your way is so good, you should be able to get what you want with arguments.
b) If you force everyone else to follow your way without their consent, you are not a leader you are just abusing the system.
c) That it works does not mean that was the best option.
d) That other people can also have done the same does not mean that they are worse than you, it may be that they see a bigger picture that you can't see.
It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences.
Not disagreeing, but some points from a different perspective:
a) Arguments don’t work because team doesn’t listen and/or doesn’t want to change because they wish to stay in their comfort zone.
b) The responsible manager is incompetent and/or does not understand the things he/she’s responsible for and/or is a micromanager which kills any spontaneous action.
c) Those who see a bigger picture do not care to or cannot explain it and/or keep it a secret.
d) Sometimes the best option is to just do it (and improve it later) instead of going through a slow and energy consuming process of gathering consent etc.
Sometimes you don't have the luxury of waiting until there's a consensus. In some teams there may never be a consensus and the whole "but if we had one it would be far better!" is a myth.
That's not an excuse to just go ahead from the start and say "eh, finding a consensus is too hard, I will just do it", but it is a reason to accept that at some point everything has been said, just not by everyone. And then a decision has to be made or you will talk forever.
> It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences.
This works in both directions: Are they also accountable for the success or is it a team success then? I see this pattern of not being able to get any decisions made, then hope that someone makes a decision and when it pans out "aren't we a great team? yes, yes, we are" and if not "They decided to just do it, it's their fault" and so on - you either share the wins and losses or you share neither.
That's the nature of a proverb. It's a concise unit of packaged wisdom. It's useful to have in your mental arsenal, like a function. Often it's useful because it contradicts the default wisdom.
Applied to the wrong thing in the wrong way, or on the wrong day (there are no rules)... it's wrong. This (ironically) makes proverbs and religion a bad mix.
Don't argue with the devil. Measure twice, cut once. Grab the bull by the balls. Great company at a fair price, not fair company at a great price. Show must go on. Show, don't tell. It's how you use it that matters. Who cares what colour the cat is. Quality over quantity. There but for the grace of...
If you like your statements airtight, you don't like proverbs. Airtight statements require too many words. We can find exceptions to all these rules.
EDIT/PS: reading over what I wrote, proverbs are interesting. proverb meta analysis required.
I think the relationship of power is important here. Reaching consensus among peers is not the same thing as asking for permission from an entity of a superior position of power.
I quite strongly disagree. Just like picture is worth a thousand words, working code (prototype) is worth a thousand words too.
If I decide to go out and code a prototype without asking anyone anything, where is the harm in that? You can criticize it after it is done. You could have done the same thing. And you can always throw it out.
And in my view, this precisely is "leading by doing". Linus Torvalds didn't seek consensus before he wrote Git.
In another response, you write, arrogant people are the biggest problem. I don't think doing something on your own is arrogant at all.
And I think, "being accountable for consequences" is exactly the "forgiveness" part. Although I am not a fan of hierarchical decision making systems.
I am often that getting things done guy, and have definitely incurred my share of debt in terms of mistrust or ill will from some folks.
That said, doing that is a calculation and is done to achieve the organizations mission. That may be restore a customer out of service (sorry, we’ll do it tomorrow, busy) or hit a milestone that matters on time (we’d love to, but expediting some change process is a lot of work).
Unfortunately, in these situations I’m empowered to make tactical changes, but not to make more valuable strategic change. From my perspective process and controls are there to make things go faster, not as a weapon to make sure folks leave at 4. The trains need to run.
I agree with you on the downsides of distributed decision making, but I think it is just a matter of tradeoffs.
Involving more people in a decision is usually going to result in better decisions, as it will benefit from more viewpoints, experiences, and critical review.
The tradeoff of group decision making is that it is expensive and slow. Even just a single hour meeting with 8 people is a whole man day of work.
On the other hand, distributed decision making (where individuals or smaller groups make decisions) is faster and cheaper, though on average probably produces less optimal decisions.
Whether centralized or distributed decision making is optimal depends entirely on factors like how much better the centralized decision is than the distributed one, at what cost that improvement comes, and the cost of later correcting a sub-optimal decision.
In other words, the real world is complicated. Soothing bromides like "It's Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission" or whatever its opposite is don't have very much value.
In your example, I read it as the other members of the team not being quite as enlightened as she is, because they 'mistrust' instead of recognizing her soft leadership. It sounds like you believe she bears responsibility for that. I disagree. Accountability is different, and people like you're describing are still accountable. I take risks occasionally which are against the consensus and implicate the whole team. There's zero chance I wouldn't be held extremely accountable if it didn't pan out, and that is as it should be.
> d) That other people can also have done the same does not mean that they are worse than you, it may be that they see a bigger picture that you can't see.
I'm confused why you seem to be so sure that in the anecdote you shared, this isn't exactly what was going on. Could it be you have some unconscious bias against the person who took that action, leading you to see them as a rogue cowboy instead of a wise leader?
I think there are two nuances missing here: First, it's easier to ask forgiveness -- this is a descriptive statement, it doesn't say better. Second, this is predicated on getting forgiveness. If what you do isn't relatively easy to forgive, you lose a lot, eg. getting fired or otherwise formally sanctioned. It's certainly neither easier, nor better.
Sometimes the key thing is to make a choice, any choice is better than paralysis. This is often the case for military action during war for example, which is why it's usual for countries to have an executive military leadership which makes decisions immediately and is answerable to a ponderous legislature only after the fact. Most large organisations will face at least a few decisions in this category.
A corporate entity should have someone who has authority to do so, is willing to make those decisions, and accepts responsibility for their consequences even when bad. In principle this is the CEO role.
But much more often the right choice is essential, paralysis is better than the wrong choice, at least for a while, so we can afford to dither while we get the choice right. Of course if you're sure you're right this is frustrating - why wait for others to see your POV. But I have very little trust in anybody who hasn't noticed that they're often wrong. Such a person is inevitably short-sighted and their judgement untrustworthy, whereas those who know they're sometimes wrong should be patient to find out if this is one of those times.
Knowing whether you're facing a "any choice is better than no choice" situation is much easier than knowing the right answer, and I think "easier to ask forgiveness" is about people who take this approach when they know that permission is an option and choose not to take it. We should try to make permission easier, and forgiveness harder to avoid rewarding this undesirable behaviour.
Finally though sometimes choice is an illusion. It is not worth anybody's effort to give or deny permission for the inevitable, and we shouldn't praise the "decision" to accede to it. Recognising that something is inevitable and thus not subject to choice is trickier, and you can waste a lot of time discussing whether to do A or B when everybody in the discussions knows actually C will happen and the choice won't matter. Learn to let it go.
As far as work goes, I think one reason for this saying is that getting permission requires a higher degree of good communication. Once the deed is done, you can show it to explain it's value. Getting permission involves conveying your vision to people you may not know well who may not have time or inclination to really understand it.
For some of the other examples, such as marrying someone, if you go ahead and get married without asking, it signals a higher mutual commitment. In some sense, it more strongly suggests you love each other and are not merely social climbing.
I think an article about the logic and practicalities behind this could be fascinating.
With regards to an organizational/hierarchical environment:
Asking for permission puts the responsibility of the decision on the person being asked, which makes everything slower and more conservative.
Just doing it and rationalizing it afterward tends to be more efficient, and helps to captures upside sooner rather than wasting time worrying about the downsides.
Can say in $dayjob, if I need permission for something it will take 6 months and a lot of red-tape which ties up multiple man months itself ( 99% of it on my team :( ).
If I can get by without permission and instead ask forgiveness, the total time spend on meta-work is significantly less, and ironically we do a better job because we don't want to do something unsanctioned that goes wrong.
I can see why this phrase caught on, I'm surprised there's no reference from before 1842, since this feels like one of those pre-industrial slogans.. Something you'd find more related to police or a parent than an institution of work.
While this quote rings true most of the time, it's important to discern whether this mindset is merely enabling mischief or allowing for an acceptable level of disobedience.
Many monumental breakthroughs were accomplished by disregarding permission, and rebellious attributes are attributed to people like Stephen Wolfram[0] and Albert Einstein. The MIT Media Lab even has an award for disobedience [1].
This mindset, though, can manifest into an unhealthy obsession with breaking the rules. An uncontrolled expectation to "ask forgiveness" can lead to murky moral territories. Where do you draw the line between accepting rebelliousness and enforcing the law?
I feel like the Dunning-Kruger effect plays a big part in the problem. Many people feel an illusory confidence in their capacity to understand a problem domain, whether they are in the role of the rebellious person or the law enforcer. Consensus with group wisdom outside of that hierarchical dynamic seems like one of the best protections against foolish rebellions or foolish rigidity, but that still leaves the problem case of what to do when the larger group wisdom is not correct. That's going to be the rarer case by definition considering how badly people tend to be at rating their own knowledge, but we also depend on those rare, capable individuals to overturn established wisdom. Or as put more succinctly by George Bernard Shaw,
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Many of the comments relate this adage to situations where the rules explicitly prohibit some behaviour. I always assumed it is meant for situations where the rules are not settled yet or unclear. If I ask in such a situation for permission someone may forbid it. If I do it anyway I brake not only a rule but show that I do not accept my superiors authority. It would have been better to act in uncertainty about the rules. The result of my actions could vindicate my behaviour and help clarify the rules for the future. In the few situations were I offend someone I could still plead to ignorance.
I have found myself saying this in my mobile apps business.
Oftentimes, I will contact someone associated with the community for a product I am building and ask them if they want to help promote the product once it's out. They take this as some sort of partnership where I have to get their permission to publish my products or go in the direction they want to go, just because they might help me out.
And usually these companies are slower moving than I am, so doing the back-and-forth and getting feedback would take forever. With mobile apps, you have no idea if the thing will ever take off, and I have found it is best to just launch the thing and see what happens.
I'm not sure what some of these people think. I'm an independent businessman. I have the right to do whatever I want with my own products, and yes, I can choose to launch something whenever I damn well please. If you like it, go ahead and promote it. If you don't, don't. I honestly don't care.
So I take this saying more as "Doing anything at all will always be perceived as offensive to someone. You might as well do it and let them get offended."
And I know that soundbite lacks nuance and could easily be taken to mean something else, but then it wouldn't be a cool soundbite either. Obviously don't murder, rape, etc, and do take others into consideration when you are working on a team and you need their help longterm.
But I think the essence of the saying is that nobody is purely innocent and anything worth doing will probably ruffle some feathers. If you're overly cautious, you won't ever accomplish anything significant.
I was convinced this statement was also in the "Zen of Python" (PEP 20 [0]), but it's "only" in the official glossary [1]
> EAFP
> Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This common Python coding style assumes the
existence of valid keys or attributes and catches exceptions if the assumption proves false.
This clean and fast style is characterized by the presence of many try and except statements.
The technique contrasts with the LBYL style common to many other languages such as C.
edit: Sorry to bring programming to the table again, the 'philosophical' side is also interesting of course!
On a related note I've found it's easier to get your way with e.g. your manager if you say "I will do this!" rather than "Can I do this?"
This probably have to do with that in the second case you ask your manager to make a decision, causing them cognitive load. In the first case you already made that decision for them.
The first time I read this quote is in Peter Hessler's Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.
He use it to summarize Chinese reform and opening. You cannot get any permission from goverment, but you can try it first. If something bad happens, ask forgiveness. It maybe the core reason of Chinese speed.
Sometimes your methods ask for permission. Every parameter is validated at the top of the function and errors are thrown if any parameter is wrong, e.g. null parameter checks. Generally this happens inversely to the amount of trust in the caller. A public web service call would have everything strictly validated.
Sometimes your methods ask for forgiveness. For sake of argument, they accept a bunch of pointers as parameters and blindly start dereferencing them without any null checks. This is done because it is a small implementation and the caller is completely trusted and is known as fact they would never be null. Those checks are redundant and a performance cost.
It's really a judgement call to known when to get permission and when to ask forgiveness.
I live my life by this quote. The Swedish version even rhymes and sound charming. It's a great mindset for trying new things and exploring new ideas, which would have been blocked by bureaucracy if approval were needed.
Not related to the article's content but, this link just flashes between black and white once it's loaded for me (iOS Firefox). This might be one of the strangest broken websites I've seen.
Moses was a genius and accumulating and wielding power. His playbook wasn't "take initiative then hope for the best", it was "take initiative then destroy lives and careers until you get your way."
[+] [-] papeda|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mieseratte|7 years ago|reply
Which makes me wonder, are there cultures wherein permission is easy, but forgiveness is not?
[+] [-] candiodari|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gowld|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|7 years ago|reply
In an institutional context when we ask for permission from higher ups, especially publicly, we put them on the spot to clarify some rule or make a pronouncement which rules will be enforced and which won't. Sometimes you have to break rules, or perversely are even expected to, just to get things done. Asking permission means the boss has to tell you that you cannot break the rule officially, even though they know the rule has to be broken for the task to be accomplished. So not only do they deny the permission, they also resent you for forcing them to make the pronouncement and preventing anyone in the near future from accomplishing the task at hand efficiently. In other words even as they respond with "No, Peter, you cannot bypass filling out 10 TPS reports just to fix this bug" in their head they are thinking "Why the fuck didn't you just do it. Why did you have to ask me about it in front of everyone..."
Large power structures usually have rules you cannot break, you can break if you want to, and perversely enough, you should or are expected to break. Winning or losing the politics game often comes down to simply understanding which rules belong to each set.
[+] [-] tj-teej|7 years ago|reply
Asking for permission (or asking anything), in a complex domain is difficult and always carries a cost.
In two-way-door decisions, forgiveness IS easier. But an incorrect, one-way-door decision is hard to "forgive" ("accountability" and the like).
Well-run companies (e.g. Amazon) understand this very well and have processes to only require permission only in one-way-door decisions.
[+] [-] darkerside|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseudoramble|7 years ago|reply
I'm curious about how one decides whether a decision even is one-way or two-way? I can think of some contrived examples (demolishing a building is one-way, deciding where to get lunch today is two-way) but what about more complex and realistic examples? Is it that the cost to reverse that decision is so high that it's effectively a one-way choice? And can you make a one-way idea into a two-way idea in some scenarios?
[+] [-] robocat|7 years ago|reply
It is memorable, but wierd.
[+] [-] kartan|7 years ago|reply
That can be seen by some management as "getting things done". And quite often that person feels vindicated when her solution works.
But that person is not able to realize the cost of the mistrust of the team and detachment of the job nor to think about the possibility that the other solution not only have worked, but it will have been way better.
At my job, I have to arbitrate between team members and teams. I will flag anyone that decides to "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" and notify their manager. I don't like to work with people that think that they are so good that don't need to present their arguments like the rest.
So when going for forgiveness instead of permission, it is wise to think:
a) If your way is so good, you should be able to get what you want with arguments.
b) If you force everyone else to follow your way without their consent, you are not a leader you are just abusing the system.
c) That it works does not mean that was the best option.
d) That other people can also have done the same does not mean that they are worse than you, it may be that they see a bigger picture that you can't see.
It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences.
[+] [-] rvanmil|7 years ago|reply
a) Arguments don’t work because team doesn’t listen and/or doesn’t want to change because they wish to stay in their comfort zone.
b) The responsible manager is incompetent and/or does not understand the things he/she’s responsible for and/or is a micromanager which kills any spontaneous action.
c) Those who see a bigger picture do not care to or cannot explain it and/or keep it a secret.
d) Sometimes the best option is to just do it (and improve it later) instead of going through a slow and energy consuming process of gathering consent etc.
e) Software architects
[+] [-] sgift|7 years ago|reply
That's not an excuse to just go ahead from the start and say "eh, finding a consensus is too hard, I will just do it", but it is a reason to accept that at some point everything has been said, just not by everyone. And then a decision has to be made or you will talk forever.
> It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences.
This works in both directions: Are they also accountable for the success or is it a team success then? I see this pattern of not being able to get any decisions made, then hope that someone makes a decision and when it pans out "aren't we a great team? yes, yes, we are" and if not "They decided to just do it, it's their fault" and so on - you either share the wins and losses or you share neither.
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
Applied to the wrong thing in the wrong way, or on the wrong day (there are no rules)... it's wrong. This (ironically) makes proverbs and religion a bad mix.
Don't argue with the devil. Measure twice, cut once. Grab the bull by the balls. Great company at a fair price, not fair company at a great price. Show must go on. Show, don't tell. It's how you use it that matters. Who cares what colour the cat is. Quality over quantity. There but for the grace of...
If you like your statements airtight, you don't like proverbs. Airtight statements require too many words. We can find exceptions to all these rules.
EDIT/PS: reading over what I wrote, proverbs are interesting. proverb meta analysis required.
[+] [-] sebcat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js8|7 years ago|reply
If I decide to go out and code a prototype without asking anyone anything, where is the harm in that? You can criticize it after it is done. You could have done the same thing. And you can always throw it out.
And in my view, this precisely is "leading by doing". Linus Torvalds didn't seek consensus before he wrote Git.
In another response, you write, arrogant people are the biggest problem. I don't think doing something on your own is arrogant at all.
And I think, "being accountable for consequences" is exactly the "forgiveness" part. Although I am not a fan of hierarchical decision making systems.
[+] [-] Spooky23|7 years ago|reply
That said, doing that is a calculation and is done to achieve the organizations mission. That may be restore a customer out of service (sorry, we’ll do it tomorrow, busy) or hit a milestone that matters on time (we’d love to, but expediting some change process is a lot of work).
Unfortunately, in these situations I’m empowered to make tactical changes, but not to make more valuable strategic change. From my perspective process and controls are there to make things go faster, not as a weapon to make sure folks leave at 4. The trains need to run.
[+] [-] jaredklewis|7 years ago|reply
Involving more people in a decision is usually going to result in better decisions, as it will benefit from more viewpoints, experiences, and critical review.
The tradeoff of group decision making is that it is expensive and slow. Even just a single hour meeting with 8 people is a whole man day of work.
On the other hand, distributed decision making (where individuals or smaller groups make decisions) is faster and cheaper, though on average probably produces less optimal decisions.
Whether centralized or distributed decision making is optimal depends entirely on factors like how much better the centralized decision is than the distributed one, at what cost that improvement comes, and the cost of later correcting a sub-optimal decision.
In other words, the real world is complicated. Soothing bromides like "It's Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission" or whatever its opposite is don't have very much value.
[+] [-] luk32|7 years ago|reply
Its application is to achieve your goal or enforcing your decision regardless of superior's stance.
Other wording i know is (loosely transtalted) to put somebody against a fact (as opposed to decision).
It precisely because overriding a done deed is harder that arguing against or disallowing it.
[+] [-] psyc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkerside|7 years ago|reply
I'm confused why you seem to be so sure that in the anecdote you shared, this isn't exactly what was going on. Could it be you have some unconscious bias against the person who took that action, leading you to see them as a rogue cowboy instead of a wise leader?
[+] [-] mseebach|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tialaramex|7 years ago|reply
A corporate entity should have someone who has authority to do so, is willing to make those decisions, and accepts responsibility for their consequences even when bad. In principle this is the CEO role.
But much more often the right choice is essential, paralysis is better than the wrong choice, at least for a while, so we can afford to dither while we get the choice right. Of course if you're sure you're right this is frustrating - why wait for others to see your POV. But I have very little trust in anybody who hasn't noticed that they're often wrong. Such a person is inevitably short-sighted and their judgement untrustworthy, whereas those who know they're sometimes wrong should be patient to find out if this is one of those times.
Knowing whether you're facing a "any choice is better than no choice" situation is much easier than knowing the right answer, and I think "easier to ask forgiveness" is about people who take this approach when they know that permission is an option and choose not to take it. We should try to make permission easier, and forgiveness harder to avoid rewarding this undesirable behaviour.
Finally though sometimes choice is an illusion. It is not worth anybody's effort to give or deny permission for the inevitable, and we shouldn't praise the "decision" to accede to it. Recognising that something is inevitable and thus not subject to choice is trickier, and you can waste a lot of time discussing whether to do A or B when everybody in the discussions knows actually C will happen and the choice won't matter. Learn to let it go.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|7 years ago|reply
For some of the other examples, such as marrying someone, if you go ahead and get married without asking, it signals a higher mutual commitment. In some sense, it more strongly suggests you love each other and are not merely social climbing.
I think an article about the logic and practicalities behind this could be fascinating.
[+] [-] coralreef|7 years ago|reply
Asking for permission puts the responsibility of the decision on the person being asked, which makes everything slower and more conservative.
Just doing it and rationalizing it afterward tends to be more efficient, and helps to captures upside sooner rather than wasting time worrying about the downsides.
[+] [-] nbabitskiy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croo|7 years ago|reply
“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.”
-Emo Philips-
[+] [-] dijit|7 years ago|reply
If I can get by without permission and instead ask forgiveness, the total time spend on meta-work is significantly less, and ironically we do a better job because we don't want to do something unsanctioned that goes wrong.
I can see why this phrase caught on, I'm surprised there's no reference from before 1842, since this feels like one of those pre-industrial slogans.. Something you'd find more related to police or a parent than an institution of work.
[+] [-] rmshea|7 years ago|reply
Many monumental breakthroughs were accomplished by disregarding permission, and rebellious attributes are attributed to people like Stephen Wolfram[0] and Albert Einstein. The MIT Media Lab even has an award for disobedience [1].
This mindset, though, can manifest into an unhealthy obsession with breaking the rules. An uncontrolled expectation to "ask forgiveness" can lead to murky moral territories. Where do you draw the line between accepting rebelliousness and enforcing the law?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram#Education_and_...
[1] https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/disobedience-award/
[+] [-] notabee|7 years ago|reply
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
[+] [-] kalonis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] officemonkey|7 years ago|reply
Forgiveness will always be given for a "great success."
[+] [-] alfredallan1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulie_a|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edem|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bendixso|7 years ago|reply
Oftentimes, I will contact someone associated with the community for a product I am building and ask them if they want to help promote the product once it's out. They take this as some sort of partnership where I have to get their permission to publish my products or go in the direction they want to go, just because they might help me out.
And usually these companies are slower moving than I am, so doing the back-and-forth and getting feedback would take forever. With mobile apps, you have no idea if the thing will ever take off, and I have found it is best to just launch the thing and see what happens.
I'm not sure what some of these people think. I'm an independent businessman. I have the right to do whatever I want with my own products, and yes, I can choose to launch something whenever I damn well please. If you like it, go ahead and promote it. If you don't, don't. I honestly don't care.
So I take this saying more as "Doing anything at all will always be perceived as offensive to someone. You might as well do it and let them get offended."
And I know that soundbite lacks nuance and could easily be taken to mean something else, but then it wouldn't be a cool soundbite either. Obviously don't murder, rape, etc, and do take others into consideration when you are working on a team and you need their help longterm.
But I think the essence of the saying is that nobody is purely innocent and anything worth doing will probably ruffle some feathers. If you're overly cautious, you won't ever accomplish anything significant.
[+] [-] afraca|7 years ago|reply
> EAFP > Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. This common Python coding style assumes the existence of valid keys or attributes and catches exceptions if the assumption proves false. This clean and fast style is characterized by the presence of many try and except statements. The technique contrasts with the LBYL style common to many other languages such as C.
edit: Sorry to bring programming to the table again, the 'philosophical' side is also interesting of course!
[0]: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ [1]: https://docs.python.org/3/glossary.html
[+] [-] user5454|7 years ago|reply
This probably have to do with that in the second case you ask your manager to make a decision, causing them cognitive load. In the first case you already made that decision for them.
[+] [-] whisk|7 years ago|reply
He use it to summarize Chinese reform and opening. You cannot get any permission from goverment, but you can try it first. If something bad happens, ask forgiveness. It maybe the core reason of Chinese speed.
[+] [-] snarfy|7 years ago|reply
Sometimes your methods ask for forgiveness. For sake of argument, they accept a bunch of pointers as parameters and blindly start dereferencing them without any null checks. This is done because it is a small implementation and the caller is completely trusted and is known as fact they would never be null. Those checks are redundant and a performance cost.
It's really a judgement call to known when to get permission and when to ask forgiveness.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] antonkm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseingatl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maligree|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nixpulvis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smogcutter|7 years ago|reply
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1111.The_Power_Broker
Moses was a genius and accumulating and wielding power. His playbook wasn't "take initiative then hope for the best", it was "take initiative then destroy lives and careers until you get your way."