Reference
Why We Make Mistakes
- Joe Hallinan
Why We Make Mistakes
- Joe Hallinan
Summary
Hallinan discussed thoroughly the many reasons for why humans make mistakes. Inexperience with subject matter can cause people to miss things. The ones who are more experienced will be more sensitive to minute changes and will therefore be able to pick up on more. Another problem is that humans connect information to meaning. We need to for distinct enough meanings to things otherwise we can expect to forget it at some point. Our tendencies to make snap judgments also causes many problems for us. We think we know the whole picture when, in fact, we usually do not at the blink of an eye.
Hallinan discussed thoroughly the many reasons for why humans make mistakes. Inexperience with subject matter can cause people to miss things. The ones who are more experienced will be more sensitive to minute changes and will therefore be able to pick up on more. Another problem is that humans connect information to meaning. We need to for distinct enough meanings to things otherwise we can expect to forget it at some point. Our tendencies to make snap judgments also causes many problems for us. We think we know the whole picture when, in fact, we usually do not at the blink of an eye.
While being familiar with something can be a great asset, we can skip over certain details because we assume they will be there. This is a common source for foolish errors and missing seemingly obvious details. One more important source of mistakes the lack of constraint that we put on ourselves. He explains how constraints drastically deplete the probability for error by removing sources for common errors. Many don’t learn from their mistakes, because they did not properly find the source of it. Similarly, removing complexity and adding constraints can greatly improve the effectiveness of a design.
One of the main points Hallinan wanted the reader to leave with was to think small. It is the tiniest things that can make the largest impact on a person’s behavior. He also added that attitude has a large effect on many things, like how we view life. We need to keep the right things in perspective if we ever expect to decrease our rate of making mistakes.
Discussion
This book was a great discussion on the numerous causes of mistakes. I know there were quite a few that I am guilty of doing myself. One of the main ones is overlooking obvious things because I am too tied up in thinking I know everything in a certain subject. As soon as you make mistakes in a situation like this, you immediately wonder how something so simple could have been missed. Now that kind of stuff makes a little more sense than it did before. Something I will try to keep in mind is thinking small. I think as a whole, humans like to overcomplicate things. When something seems nearly impossible, we’re most likely looking at it the wrong way. By breaking things down and thinking in the simplest terms, this can certainly help in resolving this issue.
This book was a great discussion on the numerous causes of mistakes. I know there were quite a few that I am guilty of doing myself. One of the main ones is overlooking obvious things because I am too tied up in thinking I know everything in a certain subject. As soon as you make mistakes in a situation like this, you immediately wonder how something so simple could have been missed. Now that kind of stuff makes a little more sense than it did before. Something I will try to keep in mind is thinking small. I think as a whole, humans like to overcomplicate things. When something seems nearly impossible, we’re most likely looking at it the wrong way. By breaking things down and thinking in the simplest terms, this can certainly help in resolving this issue.
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