Book Reading #50: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes

Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary: 

Chapter 12: We Don't Constrain Ourselves. In this chapter, Hallinan discusses concepts such as constraints and affordances, and how employing these two concepts could avoid many of the "human errors" we make. Some of the examples he gives include that of the deaths of many patients when given the wrong prescription or the wrong amount of doses. How these errors could be avoided if we give meaningful names and descriptions to things, such as the names of the points in the sky given by the FAA. Misattributing the error to the correct reason is one of the reasons why we haven't been able to prevent us from making so many errors. Through out the chapter, Hallinan discusses actions that the FAA has taken in order to reduce the amount of human error, something medical societies have not. 

Chapter 13: The Grass Does Look Greener. This chapter was dedicated to discussing how individuals are not very accurate at predicting how happy they and other will feel as a consequence of an event. Some of the examples he used were about moving to California, and how everybody thinks they will be happier if they lived there, but in fact, there are many people who decide to move from there after trying to live there for a couple of years. One of the causes he discussed is that of having hope of things becoming better. If there is hope that a situation can become better, individuals are not adapting to the current situation, thus not living it to the best of their abilities.

Conclusion. This is a summary chapter of the complete book. Hallinan reviews and summarizes the main ideas of the book, and provides readers with some of the most important examples he had given. He recommends that we give close attention to those things we have opted not to choose, this is a good exercise to realize the why of our mistakes and we can learn from them. He also invites the readers to think a bit negatively sometimes, not always positive. To allow ourselves to learn even from those who are not such experts as we think, since their non-expertize will allow them to see errors that the experts have overlooked. He also recommends people to sleep well, since he claims that sleepiness is one of the main causes of error. And to be happy with what we have, learn how to love what we currently have because if we keep thinking about what we could have we will be unhappy.

Discussion: The ideas from chapter twelve were very easy to understand since they were concepts we learned from the Norman readings. I think it is really interesting to see how these concepts are applied throughout many books, and how relevant these ideas are in order to avoid error. 

In chapter thirteen, the idea of high expectations leading us to be unhappy is something I had encountered before. I think this is linked to the idea of having so many choices that after we have picked one, we stress ourselves thinking maybe we did the wrong decision and we would be better off if we had made a different decision in the first place.

I really enjoyed reading the conclusion of this book. Even though he summarizes the previous chapters and key ideas, he also gives advice to the reader regarding how to live a better life with a reduced amount of errors.