This proverb has been circulated for many years and is used to comfort people in various failure scenarios. Recently, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists have made a surprising statement: < P > So, what is the channel for success? Is it the story we read when we were young that Edison failed 1 times to invent the light bulb, or is it what is claimed in the current cognitive science paper-your own failure will only make you depressed, and the failure of others is something of reference significance to you?
The Black Box Thinking published by Houlang draws a very important conclusion by comparing the aviation industry with the highest safety factor in the world with the fields of medical care and justice with the same high technology and elite:
Every time an air crash happens unfortunately in news or movies, the most important thing for people is to find the black box of the crashed plane besides searching for survivors.
this is one of the special electronic recording equipment for aircraft. Usually there are two on an airplane, one is the voice recorder in the cockpit, and the other is the flight data recorder in the tail. The black box is very sturdy. Its main function is to record the voice conversation half an hour before the plane stops working or crashes, and the two-hour flight parameters such as altitude, speed, heading, climb rate, descent rate, acceleration, fuel consumption, landing gear retraction, Greenwich Mean Time, as well as the working conditions of the aircraft system and engine working parameters. When the plane has an accident or even crashes, the search and rescue staff will decode the recorded contents for accident analysis.
Although the English name is Black Box, this box is bright red, so that the search and rescue personnel can find it more easily after the plane crash. Why is it called a black box? Matthew Sayed, the author of the book "Black Box Thinking", explained:
I remember that Daniel Kahneman, the American Nobel Prize winner, once told such a story:
What makes the aviation industry one of the industries with the highest safety factor in the world? If it is only because of a small red (or black) black box, it must be partial. But if it is because people in this industry have "black box thinking" and constantly improve and improve the safety factor, it is not false at all. So, what is "black box thinking"? In the first part of this book, the definition of "black box thinking" is clearly defined:
It can be seen that this kind of black box thinking is actually a mode that makes your thinking light up the green light. You don't refuse or deny, actively learn from failure, and then update your progressive open mind.
It is said that during World War II, the US Air Force had a catch-22:
Why is it difficult to learn from failure in many industries? Because they all have such catch-22 in their thinking mode, this cognitive mode of thinking is called "closed cycle" in "Black Box Thinking".
In the author's view, this "self-consistent" logic seems to avoid failure. Even if it does encounter failure, it can be covered up by terms such as "technical error" and "accident". But this kind of closed loop will make it impossible for you to really extract useful experience from failure, let alone improve it. When the elites of the whole industry fall into this circular mode of thinking, then they will never jump out, find a promotion point from failure, and then constantly correct and continue to evolve. Perhaps this is the reason why many cognitive scientists come to the conclusion that "failure can't lead to success" from some industries that are easy to fall into the closed-loop field-because they don't think that failure is worth learning, failure is bad, so they will try their best to cover up the failure, unless they encounter an overwhelming failure, they have to admit that they have "made a mistake", and then severely punish the unlucky ones, and then quickly put the matter behind them, and no one will talk about it again.
Some scientists have found:
This just shows the harm of "closed loop". Because I have failed, no matter what the reason, I always try to shirk it to other factors. If I can't argue, I will ignore it as soon as possible. In the face of failure, psychologists put forward a theory of "cognitive dissonance" to describe the inner anxiety when our certain things are challenged. Because we all feel that we are rational and wise, when we do something wrong, we will fidget, deny the mistake from the subconscious and ignore the evidence against us. This is a psychological instinctive reaction of human beings in the face of mistakes, especially major mistakes. No matter in the medical field or other industries, it is possible for people to have this psychological reaction.
The black box system in aviation is the system to put an end to this psychological defense mechanism:
There is one of the most famous flights in the history of contemporary commercial aviation: just two minutes after the plane took off at New York Airport, it was attacked by geese, which caused all the engines to fail. The captain decisively forced the 7-ton Airbus A32 to land on the Hudson River, and all the crew on board survived. In an interview, the captain said:
Black box thinking is not only the belief that failure is the mother of success, but also the response, attitude and investigation methods to failure.
This is not the first person who died of bloodletting therapy, but what is more sad is that it is far from the last victim of bloodletting therapy, because it was not until 5 years after Washington's death that Western medicine verified that bloodletting therapy was harmful to people's health and gradually abandoned this medical method.
Doctors didn't mean to kill patients' executioners, so why can't even Washington's death stop people from insisting on bloodletting therapy again and again? The answer is that the closed-loop thinking mode makes our interpretation of mistakes fallacious.
At that time, doctors were convinced of the efficacy of bloodletting therapy. If the patient is cured after bloodletting therapy, then it is naturally proved that bloodletting therapy is effective. If the patient dies after treatment, then the doctors declare-poor man, he is too ill, so even bloodletting therapy can't save him! ! !
this mode of thinking is not unique to people in the past, even today. A few days ago, there was a story in the audio program of logical thinking:
But in fact, it was very simple-the deceased wouldn't talk, and the murderer would try his best to blame the deceased for his first action in order to reduce his responsibility. A similar example is also mentioned in "Black Box Thinking":
Only by comprehensively considering all factors and information and conducting objective and neutral comparative experiments can we find the correct ideas for improvement from the problems.
For social fields, such as policy making, judicial reform, or the prediction of prices and house prices, whether it is government decision-making, corporate strategy or personal response, it is equally beneficial for us to keep the black box thinking. It seems that these fields can't draw conclusions through scientific experiments. In fact, we should adopt the method of comparative experiments to judge whether our assumptions are correct or not more rationally, so as to make more wise choices. In the book "Black Box Thinking", while introducing the randomized controlled experiment (double-blind test), a "autopsy before death" is proposed to reduce the risk of failure and increase the success rate of the project.
It doesn't seem easy to determine whether "failure is the mother of success" or "success is the mother of success", but the thinking mode of black box thinking warns us not to be afraid of failure, but to look at failure from a growing perspective. What's the old saying?
From a safety point of view, we expect that black boxes will never be used on airplanes, but we always need them.