I was surfing the internet when I found this question. It really piques my interest, because I feel that there are just so many answers and variations of answers to this, and it's just really deep.

For me, I feel that not attempting is worse because when you do try but fail, you will most likely learn from your mistakes and do better next time, whereas never trying doesn't expose you to the situation. How are you going to pass that situation if you never had any experience?

Sure, there comes the aspect of shame, but that's what comes with trying to improve yourself. You experience shame early on, you taste victory later.

Edit: I am not sure if this thread should be here in the Debate/Logic/News Discussion or in the General Chat/Questions. 

Kind of depends on what thing you are talking about. If you are talking about tightrope walking across the grand canyon with no harness, I would say it is better to not attempt that than to fail. If you are talking about wrestling a wild grizzly bear, I would also say it is best to not try in the first place than to fail. Just saying

Edited due to spam. ~play4fun

I think it's better to attempt something and fail at it because it will have been great that you tried and you can learn from that mistake.

To me, it is worse to never attempt something in the first place. If you never attempt to even try something, then how will you know if you are any good at it? On the other hand, if you fail at something, you most likely always have another chance to try again.

Sidewinder :

It is an interesting question… I think it all depends on the
situation. Speaking from experience, there are a lot of things that I didn’t
try when I was a kid. Looking back many years later I do think that maybe I
should have at least tested the waters on a few things but again, I think it
all boils down to the situation.

 

One thing that I am happy that I tried despite not having
any previous experience was writing. When I first started out as a writer, it
happened literally on a fluke. I was sitting in a chat room one day and a guy
came in looking for writers for his website. After talking to me for close to
an hour as I recall, I eventually agreed to write one piece even though I had
no experience. From a writing standpoint, the piece I wrote was probably not the
best in terms of structure or, grammar. I can’t really remember what the topic
was that I wrote about, but that one piece eventually led me into my vocation
as a writer.

 

This happened almost 20 years ago. Even though I am still
paying my dues as a writer I am grateful for everything that it has allowed me
to do. I do wonder sometimes what might have happened had I not been asked by
that guy to write that one piece. Prior to that point I had never written
anything beyond an assignment for school or things like that. It definitely is
one thing that I am glad that I took a chance on. There have been plenty of
things that I have written over the years that looking back I would write
differently, but that is all part of the experiences, trials, tribulations, and
such that every writer has to go through regardless of what their genre is.

 

It all depends on the situation. In regard to my
writing, I guess it was simply something that I stumbled into without trying
that I discovered I had a talent for.

The worst thing you can do is not try something.  You're giving in to fear, you're not allowing your confidence and comfort come through and improve yourself, and you're developmentally backing up.

Imagine if you never try riding a bike because you're too scared.  Or you don't try any games because you're afraid you'll die and look dumb.

Failing is fine.  Failing can be better than succeeding because you learn about yourself, you learn about life, and you improve.  How many shots has Michael Jordan missed?  How much wrong code did Bill Gates write?  How many takes does it take for Johnny Depp to get a line right?

If they never tried, they wouldn't succeed.

You're giving up any chance of success when you don't try.  You're a coward, you're afraid, and you will never develop yourself if you don't try.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take,"  - Wayne Gretzky

Have you ever been to an amusement park with roller coasters and all your friends are begging you to try it with them wondering if you'll say yes. You think of all the negative things like what's going to happen to you instead of how fun it could be. Then your friends finally persuade you to go with them and what you were so nervous about turns out to be a boat load of fun. So based off that story from my personal life story and personal opinion I would say it is better to have tried than to not have tried at all.

DEADMAN427 : Your story doesn't really relate to the question. If you say yes you'll go on the roller coaster there's no way to fail. It's not two sides for example, you're building a company you can either succeed or fail. You can be successful if you make a lot of money or even if you have revenue. You fail if you're bankrupt or if you're spending more to make your product and to pay your workers than you're making. Unless you can convince me that you can somehow fail at a roller coaster your point is irrelevant. You're thinking more of a "If you had a chance to do something that you've never tried before would you? And if not would you regret it?" kind of question.

It really depends on what it is, if it's something that can harm you physically or mentally, then it's better that you don't, but if it won't harm you, then better try it out and if you failed, you can try again.

Yeah I agree, the worst thing is to not even give it a try at all. If you at least try then you can say you tried but you just weren't very good at it and you failed. It is completely different to say you failed at something you tried doing then to say you didn't even try it at all. You never really know you are bad at something unless you try it. 

It is the effort or the thought that counts, the result doesn't really matter, it is the fact that you at least tried to do something, maybe you weren't good at it, but you did it anyway. Plus you can always learn from your failures to become better at doing it. That is my standpoint on this, it is better to try and fail then to not try at all.

there is a plaque on the wall of my school and it says you will always miss 100% of the shots you don't take which  think is very true and it kind of relates to this.

Good thread by the way, you have been making a lot of good threads like this recently. 

I think it is worse to never attempt something because you can fail at something but at least you tried and now you have knowledge you didn't have before so if you try again you might get closer at accomplishing what you are setting out to do

Without question, it's worse to never attempt something in the first place. If you don't attempt it, then you will regret not attempting it later on in life. In my life, this has already proved to be true many times.

Sidewinder : In my honest (yes i'm honest. i'm one of the only honest people I know.) Opinion. its worse to never try to do something than to fail. failing is kinda fun. not to mention you'll never get to experience the moment when you first try it. WHICH IS WHY I'M GONNA GO SKYDIVING! although if I fail at that it aint gonna be pretty lolz. but I have to say not trying is worse than failing

I have seen this so many times. If you fail at something, at least now you know that it was a bad idea, but you also will now know what you need to work better on in order to improve yourself.

I feel, personally, that it's worst to never try, because if you fail at least you learn from it, and the next time you do it, you'll do better. Whereas, if you don't try at all, you never learn anything, and you'll neither get better nor worse. You'll just... exist.

It is worse to never attempt something, since if you fail, you fail, and you can try again, get better than succeed at it. If you never attempt it, than you can't know if you are good at it or not.

I think it is better to fail at something. If you try and fail, you can learn what you did wrong. I don't think it is bad to not attempt either. If you have to risk your life for something, like walk a rope or something that riskful, then it is probably better to not try. That's just my opinion.

As long as you are willing to try, you are willing to learn. For those who never try, they will never learn.

I think it is better to try something that not trying at all. I have a little story to tell with some relevance to the question.

One day, my parent aren't home yet and I was the only one at home (Home Alone). Then, I got really hungry but there is no food on the fridge except for some meat that I don't know how to cook. So, I experimented and tried frying it. And........ I failed! By the time my parents got home, they saw the over cooked meat on the table and got angry at me. But it was their fault, because they didn't left some food for me before going out without any notice.

To wrap things up, you should believe that its better to "Try Failing than Fail on Trying" because you learn on your mistakes. That's the lesson of Day!