>> We can learn as much from carefully-monitored failures as we can
>> from consistent success (meaning that something works for more
>> than a single season).

> Would you have any scientific data to support this, or does it fall
> into the category of generalized anecdotes, opinions, or sales
> pitches?

Actually, Randy routinely provides reams of documentation for those who
bother to read and understand it.

We do get some anecdotes, opinions and the occasional sales pitch, such
as the message to which I am responding, but Randy is referring to the
real meat that we get here, not the BS that inevitably shows up in an
open list that is only loosely moderated..

Often leads that are hinted here are followed up off-list.  Often topics
discussed here inspire experiments, collaboration, or show up a few
months later in beekeeping magazines -- either in articles by BEE-L
members or by the scientists who follow this list but never post.

> You will always learn more from success than from failures...  With
> success, you learn what to do to continue being successful...
> Success will always be more valuable than failures.

This belief is one of the biggest popular fallacies and the cause of
many unfortunate ruinations, and also gambling addiction.

Success breeds confidence, but without any failures, the parameters are
unknown.  Many, many successes are due to sheer luck and lead to playing
"Double or nothing" until a loss occurs, and it is a total loss.

If chance has it that a long series of winds occurs based on luck alone
(ten heads in a row), the investment lost can be immense.

Unbridled success encourages risking more than can be afforded. One of
the worst things that can happen to a young investor is to make big
money on his/her first trade.

Success as such and failure as such are hard to value absolutely, and
thus Randy's careful qualification of his meaning and context.

> There is only one situation in which I believe someone can argue
> that success and failures have equal values.  That is in a socialist
>  system in which there are no individual losses or gains.  (ie, when
>  you are spending someone else's money and not your own.)

Obviously this post is a deliberate troll with a political agenda as
revealed by this "generalized anecdote, opinion, or sales pitch"

> Or is economics a science that is discouraged on Bee-L?

Economics is discussed here daily and practised by many of our members.

As just one example, a simple daily application of economics by members
who value their time is that many simply delete, without reading, posts
by authors who demonstrate a tendency to post hot air.

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