I found this Sully post interesting.
Its about whether people or machines are to blame for accidents ie. Fukashima, car crashes, etc. The scientist who has been investigating the question wants to blame machines noting that laying the blame on human falibility tends to end up in either covering up the problem (obscuring the need for correction) or morose self blame (which doesn’t solve it either).
For years I’ve thought that one of the social institutions exaggerating this have been schools. So much of education in our public schools revolves around ranking results. The best students are lionized (and paradoxically ridiculed by lower ranking students) which then take pride in failing. Before this kicks in however, children learn not to raise their hands because they don’t want to look like idiots by making mistakes.
There is an old truism that we learn by our mistakes. Is it just possible that we encourage stupidity and or ignorance by making children resist making mistakes to avoid humiliation? I think so.
