QUOTE: Successes are more informative than failures

September 10, 2009
miproconsulting
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Successes are more informative than failures. If you succeed, everything has gone right, so there’s a lot more information in successes than failures. The brain probably evolved to take advantage of successes because there’s more information there.

—Earl K. Miller, professor of neuroscience at MIT, in “We Learn More From Success, Not Failure”

Two sides to this discussion, as I see it.

I think when humans fail, they tend to think of merely a few main reasons why the failure occurred – it happened because we did this, or I forgot this, or we made a bad decision here.

When something succeeds, the tendency is to look at the entire system and realize how everything enmeshed the way it should have.

In other words, I agree. But I don’t discount the lessons learned from mistakes and failures: I believe their lessons are more pointed and focused and often leave a more indelible impression. Failures narrow the psychological focus, whereas successes broaden it.

(Via SvN)