{"id":6061,"date":"2010-12-17T07:32:32","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T07:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=6061"},"modified":"2010-12-17T07:32:32","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T07:32:32","slug":"doing-the-same-thing-again-and-expecting-different-results-is-not-insane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=6061","title":{"rendered":"doing the same thing again and expecting different results is not insane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is it just me, or are people suddenly citing the following quote all over the place: &#8220;The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results&#8221;? It is variously attributed to Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, and Mark Twain, but may <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/blog\/in-therapy\/200907\/the-definition-insanity-is\">actually come<\/a> from mystery writer Rita Mae Brown. In any case, it&#8217;s false because:<\/p>\n<p>1. Even if it is an example of insane behavior, it is not the definition of it.<\/p>\n<p>2. It is often not insane, or even unwise. Any time there is a less-than-100-percent chance of obtaining a great outcome by doing something, you should consider repeating that something until you get the payoff. Quitting after a few attempts would be&#8211;if not insane&#8211;dumb.<\/p>\n<p>(People who repeat this phrase seem to expect good results even though stating it hasn&#8217;t achieved anything in the past. That does not make them insane but it does make them inconsistent.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it just me, or are people suddenly citing the following quote all over the place: &#8220;The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results&#8221;? It is variously attributed to Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, and Mark Twain, but may actually come from mystery writer Rita Mae Brown. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}