Konubinix' opinionated web of thoughts

Erreur Est Humaine

Fleeting

« Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum » est une locution latine qui signifie « L’erreur est humaine, persévérer [dans son erreur] est diabolique ». Elle est parfois attribuée à Sénèque, mais elle existait antérieurement.

— https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errare_humanum_est,_perseverare_diabolicum

People have absorbed this idea so much that any failure becomes a mean to change of plan, even when there is no clear reason to link the failure to the idea.

To me, this is linked to the mitigated success of applying scrum. People try something and then something goes wrong and then they reject some principle of scrum as if it was at fault.

People should try to use bayesian thinking and adjust their prior bit by bit when making errors.

“Errare humanum est” laziness fallacy

forgetting the rest of the locution and justify mistakes without learning,

“Errare humanum est” meta mistake fallacy

Focusing too much about “perseverare diabolicum” and justify doing anything with saying that it is learning.

I feel that to be useful, the action taken after acknowledging a supposedly mistake must be challenged. If not, if you fall into the feeling good bias. You end up repeating the mistake of making unrelated actions and finally fall into the “perseverare diabolicum” part of it that you claimed you avoided in the first place.

Notes linking here