insanity…and doing the same thing over and over
The quote, “insanity : doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” has been attributed to Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin, among others, but it was probably written by Rita Mae Brown (Sudden Death, Bantam Books, New York, 1983, p. 68). [1, 2]
But let’s say you’re sending out resumes, hoping to get a job. If each resume had a 1% chance of succeeding (a 1-in-100 chance), and if you managed to send out 100 resumes, you’d have about a 63% chance of landing a job. (The percentage chance of success in this idealized case is (1 - (0.99^100))*100 for reasons I won’t go into here…)
That’s a better than even chance, after doing the same, crummy thing over and over.
Or…
You decide you want to learn to draw. You sit down for an hour, try to draw a realistic picture of something on the desk in front of you, and it doesn’t come out.
Now even if you know, conceptually, what you’re supposed to do to make the drawing work, either through reading or from a teacher, you’re not going to succeed unless you practice - a lot. Getting the first 1000 failed drawings under your belt will take you a long way toward your goal of being able to draw.
Another case of doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.
There are other things going on, beyond the factors we can know. Even when we do the “same thing,” it’s just not the same thing. Our intentions and conscious inputs are not the sole determinants of the final results.
In a case where probability applies and works in your favor (the resume example), or if you trust that things are going on behind the scenes that work in your favor (the example of practicing, assuming you’re practicing correctly…), then “doing the same thing” over and over makes sense.
On the other hand, in a case where you know you will not succeed, and you know the reason why you will not succeed, then it would be “insane” (in the sense of the quote) to expect to succeed, whether you try the same thing over and over, or just once.
But…we spend much or most of our lives with an incomplete, insufficient knowledge or understanding of the other factors, the parts of the system outside of our intentions and conscious inputs. In these situations, we’re not “insane” to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results; nor do we know we will succeed or even have a chance of succeeding.
C’est la vie! Cheers! (We may as well celebrate it.)