Near Misses Aren’t Successes

It is the paradox of the close call.  Probability wise, near misses aren’t successes.  They are indicators of near failure.  And if the flaw is systemic, it requires only a small twist of fate for the next incident to result in disaster.  Rather than celebrating then ignoring close calls, we should be learning from them and doing our very best to prevent their recurrence.  But we often don’t.
—  Ben Paynter
from his Wired Magazine article: “The Fire Next Time“
Aug 2012
[This is very reminiscent of the writing of Nassim Taleb – “The Black Swan” in that we are poor judges of probability and take credit for our success while attributing failure to bad luck.  Failing to review “successes” for near failure systemic flaws makes the disaster seem inevitable in hindsight.  But, we typically don’t learn from our successes.  Do we?  —  KMAB]
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