Other People’s Mistakes

Delving into the realm of human error, we explore the profound lessons gleaned from other people's mistakes. A journey that illuminates the path to wisdom, growth, and understanding, without the personal cost of missteps.

A few things make it that way

When judging others’ poor behavior it’s easy to underestimate your own susceptibility to the power of incentives

• Incentives are almost like a drug in their ability to cloud your judgment
• Blindness makes it easy to criticize other people’s mistakes when you yourself may have been just as tempted if you were in their shoes

Judgments

When judging others, you want a simple story – did it work or did it not?

Everyone is a product of their own life experiences

The question, “Why don’t you agree with me?” can have infinite answers

• Sometimes one side is selfish, or stupid, or blind, or uninformed, or both
• What have you experienced that I haven’t that would make you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?”

Bottom Line

A low-probability bet that works makes you look like a genius while a failure makes you a failure in the eyes of others.

• The difference between the two may have been minuscule. It could have been the same person doing the exact same thing ending up on the fortune or unfortunate side of luck.

Everything worth pursuing has a less than 100% chance of working

You can make good decisions that don’t work, bad ones that do, and everything in between

• The hard thing is that when the probability isn’t easy to determine, the path of least resistance is to put your own failures in the “good bet that unfortunately didn’t work” category and other people’s failures in “that was clearly a bad idea” one.

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