Blunders And Human Error

Jared Diamond makes the argument that when humans decided 10,000 years ago to no longer be hunter-gatherers and made the decision to become sedentary and start domesticating their animals and crops, the result is that the human race has experienced a steady downfall. Diamond makes the point that “with agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism that curse our existence,” (Diamond). While the present system certainly is far from being perfected, Diamond’s various complaints and solutions certainly would not be of much use in the present time either.

Gustave Flaubert once said, “Artist’s who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” This quote expresses how those who strive for perfection are sure to never reach it. We all have our idea of a perfect world, with perfect people, but this is unrealistic. Imperfections are a part of life, and if we were to try and remove them, it would not have a satisfying result. A number of people believe that removing deformities would cause humanity to work together peacefully, while eliminating things like jealousy, greed, and embarrassment. But, they are overlooking the gloomy effects that come with perfection. We should stop searching for the perfect person because it leads to conflict, points out the imperfections in people, and perfection is impossible to achieve.

Although humans are the only animals that reason, we do not follow probability theory, a normative model, very closely in our everyday reasoning. The conjunction fallacy is one of the major errors that humans commit when dealing with problems that involve probability. Exemplified by Linda the feminist bank teller, this problem occurs when we assume that a conjunction of two premises is more likely than one or more of the premises alone. According to probability, the conjunction of two premises can never be more probable than either of the premises alone. In the Linda problem, the subjects are given a brief biographical description of Linda, followed by several statements about Linda's current occupation or activities. The subjects are then asked to rank the statements in order of most likely to least likely. The majority of the subjects choose "Linda is a bank teller and a feminist" (T and F) as more likely than "Linda is a bank teller." (F) (Barron, pg. 138)

In figure 2, the class mean calculated was 147.8kJ. The difference between the two measurements is 2,122.2kJ. This shows how low the accuracy for this experiment was. The macadamia nuts had a true energy value of 3040kJ per 100g. Looking back at figure 2, the class mean calculated was 224.4kJ which leaves a difference of 2,815.6kJ. Once again, a low accuracy. Lastly, the popcorn had a true energy value of 1910kJ. The class mean equalled to 144.1kJ. The difference between the class mean and the true value is 1,765.9kJ which shows this experiment being low in

Mistakes do lead to discovery. Without mistakes, scientists would not know what they have to fix in their research or what they are doing wrong. A chocolate bar melting in Percy Spencer’s pocket led to the invention of the microwave. He made the mistake of leaving the chocolate bar in his pocket near the Magnetron, but it lead to the invention of the microwave! So, I believe that mistakes lead to discovery of new things.

Emily had always gotten on my nerves. She was the kind of girl who acted so sweet and innocent but was extremely cunning. Her soft voice, seemingly friendly nature and plain looks led most people to believe she was a nice girl. She did a very good job fooling everyone into believing her façade, except for me. I knew her true personality; she was a nasty, cunning girl who would do whatever it took to be on top. She wanted to be better than anyone else, no matter who she stepped on in the process. We were both flute players, so her over-competitive nature was often directed at beating me. I worked hard to keep first chair in the flute section, and she worked hard to try to take first chair from me. By our senior year, the tension was higher than ever. When I again bested her for first chair, she became even more determined to beat me in the last event of the year, All-State.

Mistaken behavior is the concept that is used by professional teachers, who focus totally on guiding the child to resolve the problem, and to learn from it, instead of criticizing and labeling the child’s behavior. Perhaps this task is so difficult to realize by teachers because children make mistakes, like most of us when learning new skills of any kind. However, in order to correct the problem, they need an adult to help them to solve the problem; for example, by using the steps of the five-fingers formula for conflict resolution, which are:

Eddie Wollard had been a klutz for as long as he could remember. Although, according to his Uncle Ira, he was an idiot, who couldn’t get anything right. As much as Eddie would like to disagree with him, his uncle might just might be right. No matter what he tried to do, somehow Eddie managed to get fired from job after job when his bosses got tired of paying for each of his mistakes.

I am still mad at you for all the mistakes you made in that one year, and how you could go that whole year without learning from any of them. You should have been a better friend to Sara, and you really should have learned who the right friends to have are. France was a fantastic trip but just because of how stupid you were and the crowd you hung out with, I missed out on a lot more than I should have. Lyimmo was the biggest mistake ever. I don’t know how you were able to throw out all that you had learned your entire lifetime for one guy. As usual, you still didn’t learn your lesson after the first time, but I sure hope you do

In this experiment, there were several objectives. First, this lab was designed to determine the difference, if any, between the densities of Coke and Diet Coke. It was designed to evaluate the accuracy and precision of several lab equipment measurements. This lab was also designed to be an introduction to the LabQuest Data and the Logger Pro data analysis database. Random, systematic, and gross errors are errors made during experiments that can have significant effects to the results. Random errors do not really have a specific cause, but still causes a few of the measurements to either be a little high or a little low. Systematic errors occur when there are limitations or mistakes on lab equipment or lab procedures. These kinds of errors cause measurements to be either be always high or always low. The last kind of error is gross errors. Gross errors occur when machines or equipment fail completely. However, gross errors usually occur due to a personal mistake. For this experiment, the number of significant figures is very important and depends on the equipment being used. When using the volumetric pipette and burette, the measurements are rounded to the hundredth place while in a graduated cylinder, it is rounded to the tenth place.

One man’s ultimate demise is caused by his use of deception for the happiness of others. In Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, Cyrano loves Roxane, but is too afraid to tell her of his love due to his looks. He eventually resorts to helping Christian love Roxane by writing his words for him, leading to the two getting married. However, Roxane swears that she will never love another man and lives in a convent after Christian’s death in battle, leaving Cyrano without love for fifteen years, until just before his death. Cyrano’s insecurities about his appearance prevent him from being honest, proving that his use of deception leads to his downfall, misery and death.

Throughout Hamlet’s ordeal, he must interact with many people. Each interaction poses several possible ways to act, because of his obsessive nature, he often chose to sacrifice relationships in order to accomplish other goals and feel better about his situation. Many times, Hamlet could have tried to confront people concerning the way they were acting, but instead chose to ignore their existence, or in more extreme cases, end their existence. I can’t stress enough how different the situation could have been had Hamlet not letting his emotions get the best of him.

There is not a single person who has avoided being wrong throughout his or her entire life, or maybe even day. But also, nobody, or at least very few, accept fallibility as tolerable. Throughout history, there have been people who refuse to be wrong, and it often has lead to despondency. Although everyone wants to be right, fallibility is a necessary step to avoiding harm and improving the world.

Humans beings like to make things easier for ourselves. Therefore we take away the chance of thinking critically to provide an explanation for our questions because we often tend to fall victim to commonplace errors in thinking. There are three that are most utilized on a day-to-day basis. Three errors in thinking that are the most prosaic -- preferring stories to statistics, seeking to confirm, and arguing from ignorance -- can also be easily avoided.

in be adding two numbers, or calling someone by the wrong name, these are all