Fooled by success

When things go poorly, we have a bias for exploring all the counterfactuals to understand why: what if I tried this, what if I tried that?

Yet when things go well, we tend to not be as interested in exploring the counterfactuals falsely assuming that the absence of an obvious problem implies the absence of a problem altogether or the absence of an opportunity to improve further.

Consider the following example: you’re on a mission to create the most delicious cookie possible. You fail and retry a few times before arriving at a version that tastes delicious. At this point, you may call this a success and end the experimentation there.

But what if you’d experimented further and exchanged some of the ingredients for other ones you were considering? What if you altered other variables like baking time, temperature, and ingredient portions?

There is no way of knowing if any of these changes would produce a better cookie, but you can at least grant the possibility. And if you grant that there might be a better cookie to be made still and you are interested in this possibility, then wouldn’t it make sense to remain interested in exploring what we can try and what’s possible even in the face of success?