ShadyGreenThumb said:... We learn from our mistakes, right?
That was the theme of a book about engineering I have. If you build the same old kind of bridge that everyone builds, and it doesn't fall down, you learned nothing.
If you try something new and it hasn't fallen down yet, maybe you learned something new and maybe you just got lucky.
But if you try something new,
and it fails, AND you figure out why it failed, you have discovered an entire new principle, or a new mode of failure, that engineering students will study for decades! Progress!
There are organizations (I heard the claim that NASA is one) that are good at identifying the root causes of disasters. However, they are bad at APPLYING the lesson. Sometimes they make the same mistake repeatedly: that's an example of NOT learning anything USEFUL.
We have a program at work where we are supposed to capture "Lessons Learned" for future programs' edification. As far as I know, no one has ever entered one. if they had named it "Lessons We SHOULD Have Learned", or "Lessons Ignored", I bet they would get an earful!
