Learning to fail better

By Martin Raybould on August 2, 2024

BLACK BOX THINKING by Matthew Syed (Portfolio, 2015)

"True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it." – Karl Popper  "Ever tried. Ever failed. Try again. Fail again. Fail better" – Samuel Beckett, 'Worstword Ho!'

We all learn from our mistakes, or at least we should.

Matthew Syed shows that human psychology gets in the way of putting this basic principle into practice; he writes: "The basic proposition of this book is that we have an allergic attitude to failure." He shows how failure to learn from mistakes discourages innovative thought and stifles creative ideas.

Using well-chosen examples from medical practice, the aviation industry, vacuum cleaner design, teenage delinquency, business practice, soccer and formula one racing, the author shows how we need to redefine failure as a learning opportunity rather than a source of shame or blame.

Intuitions need to be tested and inbuilt biases recognized. Altering long-held beliefs goes against the grain even when the evidence shows that this is the logical and correct thing to do. Syed explains that cognitive dissonance is the process by which we make intellectual contortions to justify erroneous actions.

Critical thinking is not helped by the way the media favour simplicity over complexity, assigning blame without fully considering the context and examining all the salient facts. Syed advocates the use of randomised control trials (RCTs) to test out theories and says "to generate openness, we must avoid pre-emptive blaming."

Above all, this book has serious implications for the way we teach and assess children and evaluate working adults. Education and instruction is conceived on the basis of providing a body of knowledge as though this was fixed and infallible. Failures are punished. Exams are too often a process of regurgitating information.