Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, this is Tim Harford here, host of Cautionary Tales,
Speaker 1: the show that tells you stories of catastrophes from the
Speaker 1: past and explores what we can learn from them. Today,
Speaker 1: our podcast is taking over the Pushkin Network for a
Speaker 1: very special episode. I've invited some of the great and
Speaker 1: good from Pushkin to join me to give their take
Speaker 1: on the nature of mistakes and how we should think
Speaker 1: about them. Coming up, Nate Silver and Maria Khonnikova, hosts
Speaker 1: of Risky Business, on regretting mistakes and the mistake of regrets.
Speaker 2: You see that people are afraid of regretting selling a
Speaker 2: stock and then having it go up.
Speaker 3: They fear that more than they.
Speaker 2: Regret, you know, holding on to it and having it
Speaker 2: go down.
Speaker 1: And then Jonathan Goldstein from Heavyweight muses with author Sheila
Speaker 1: Hetty about how we should feel about mistakes based on
Speaker 1: her experiences with accidental ketamin, missing money, and a flying baby.
Speaker 4: I was on the ground and somebody threw me this child,
Speaker 4: and I remember thinking in that moment, you cannot drop
Speaker 4: this baby.
Speaker 1: But first, I want to kick things off with a
Speaker 1: classic cautionary tale, A strange happening in a canal. It's
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, a dredging gang working for British Waterways
Speaker 1: a struggling with a stuff problem on the picturesque Chesterfield Canal.
Speaker 1: They're trying to strengthen a section of the canal's side wall,
Speaker 1: which means dredging away silt and removing submerged junk. That's
Speaker 1: not easy at the best of times. But what really
Speaker 1: has them stumped is a length of heavy iron chain.
Speaker 1: It's blocking their efforts and it simply refuses to budge. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the foreman calls in the dredging boat. The crew attaches
Speaker 1: a line to the chain and revs up the dredger's engines.
Speaker 1: It pulls, and it pulls, and at last that does
Speaker 1: the trick. With a sharp tug, the chain finally comes unstuck.
Speaker 1: The crew remove it and the block of wood attached
Speaker 1: to it, and then take a well earned break for lunch.
Speaker 1: Lunch is dudely interrupted by a policeman in a state
Speaker 1: of some excitement. He had been passing the normally tranquil
Speaker 1: waterway when he could not help but notice a large whirlpool.
Speaker 1: By the time the crew returned to the scene, the
Speaker 1: canal has gone All that remain are a number of
Speaker 1: stranded houseboats and pleasure cruisers, not to mention the dredger
Speaker 1: itself wallowing in mud. Those, of course, and a plug hole.
Speaker 1: The plug hole had been installed by the designer of
Speaker 1: the Chesterfield Canal more than two hundred years earlier, but
Speaker 1: all records of it had been destroyed in a wartime
Speaker 1: fire in the nineteen forties, since there were no dredging
Speaker 1: boats in seventeen seventy five when the canal was opened,
Speaker 1: it was designed to be easy to drain in sections
Speaker 1: to allow works to jump in and shovel out the
Speaker 1: accumulated silt. This particular section was a mile and a
Speaker 1: half long, and the entire stretch was now nothing but
Speaker 1: mud and the occasional rusted bicycle. The canal itself had
Speaker 1: gurgled off to join the nearby river Idol. One of
Speaker 1: the workmen explained, we didn't know there was a plug.
Speaker 1: I first heard this story from the book that inspired
Speaker 1: the Cautionary Tales podcast The World's Greatest Mistakes by Nigel Blundell.
Speaker 1: It's full of these kinds of stories that are funny
Speaker 1: or tragic or both. I read it when I was
Speaker 1: a boy, and decades later It's what inspired me to
Speaker 1: start making a podcast about mistakes and what we can
Speaker 1: learn from them. So what can we learn from a
Speaker 1: vanishing canal? There's the obvious if something really really hard
Speaker 1: to move, it might be wiser to leave it in place.
Speaker 1: There's another lesson too, but I'll come back to that later.
Speaker 1: Before that, it's time to introduce our first guests for
Speaker 1: the episode, Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova, hosts of the
Speaker 1: excellent podcast Risky Business. Nate and Maria are dedicated to
Speaker 1: learning from mistakes, and their show is entirely about how
Speaker 1: to make better decisions. Nature's a statistician, Maria's a psychologist,
Speaker 1: and they're both journalists as well as high stakes poker players.
Speaker 1: It's their business to have a keen sense of risk
Speaker 1: and reward. When I asked them for some insight about mistakes,
Speaker 1: Maria really wanted to talk about the power of one thing,
Speaker 1: in particular, regret.
Speaker 2: Nate, are there any decisions lately that you didn't make?
Speaker 2: An now you're just experiencing a sense of regret, Because
Speaker 2: that's what we're going to talk about today, psychology of
Speaker 2: regret and how it affects our decision making.
Speaker 3: The things.
Speaker 2: We didn't do the risks, we didn't take the hands,
Speaker 2: we did not play, the bluffs, we did not run.
Speaker 5: In Everly, Maria, I started to think about poker hands,
Speaker 5: particularly a high stakes poker hand that I played maybe
Speaker 5: six months ago, where the short version is like a
Speaker 5: player made a bet that I thought was fairly likely
Speaker 5: to be a bluff. I had a weekend, but a
Speaker 5: hand that beat bluffs, and I had a strong spidey
Speaker 5: sense that it was worth a call, and it didn't
Speaker 5: call because, like I talked myself out it because the
Speaker 5: stakes were pretty high, right, So that's like regret about
Speaker 5: like knowing the right play and not doing it. And
Speaker 5: the stakes are high, but not so high that I
Speaker 5: couldn't like afford to have been wrung by any means, right,
Speaker 5: So that was still staying six months later.
Speaker 2: It's always those ones that we regret and that we
Speaker 2: think about over and over and over.
Speaker 3: Isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, trying to avoid regret is something that can drive
Speaker 2: our decision making to an irrational degree because it's a
Speaker 2: feeling that's not good, right. We don't like feeling regret.
Speaker 2: I definitely know that, Like when it comes to poker,
Speaker 2: for instance, I always think more about the hands where
Speaker 2: I didn't do something that I think I should have
Speaker 2: done than when I did something and it didn't work out.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So if I, you know, run a bluff and I
Speaker 2: end up busting from a tournament, it's fine, right, I
Speaker 2: went for it, and I don't really think twice about
Speaker 2: it when I think that it's a really good spot
Speaker 2: to bluff, and I'm scared, right because what if he
Speaker 2: has you know, he calls me and has me beat
Speaker 2: and I don't bluff because of that kind of feeling.
Speaker 2: That's what I think about him. Like, you know, had
Speaker 2: I just gone for it, it might have been very,
Speaker 2: very different. It's that inaction rather than the action that
Speaker 2: actually motivates me that and stays with me as a
Speaker 2: bigger mistake. So I'm curious about what you think about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty rare that I bust
Speaker 5: out of a tournament on a bluff and regret it.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's probably pretty rare in Jeneral that I
Speaker 5: bust out on a bluff, right, Like I think I
Speaker 5: take bride and having I think like a pretty decent
Speaker 5: bluffing frequency, at least relative to people's expectations of me. Right,
Speaker 5: I can run small bluff, I can un big bluff.
Speaker 6: I run creed a bluffs.
Speaker 5: Right, I probably miss someone like weird boards, right, but
Speaker 5: like probably I'm not bluffing enough, if that's the feeling, right,
Speaker 5: It's like sometimes I'll really regret like not firing a
Speaker 5: second or third barrel.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So what that means if you're not a poker fan
Speaker 5: in the audience is like there are basically four streets
Speaker 5: in Texas. Hold them so you can actually kind of
Speaker 5: bluff at the pot four times, and oftentimes you have
Speaker 5: to unload all your ammunition to do it. You're you know,
Speaker 5: getting all in probably right. And the times when like
Speaker 5: you're like you've got a fire again and there's like
Speaker 5: this guilt people can feel like, oh I just had
Speaker 5: you know, it's like I just had a greasy burger yesterday.
Speaker 5: I have to be very diligent today about like kind
Speaker 5: of what I eat and even when it's like evy
Speaker 5: to have the cheeseburger again.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: There are so many different facets to this, not just
Speaker 2: you know, in the poker world, but in broader decision making.
Speaker 2: So if you think about something that's closely related to poker,
Speaker 2: you know, the investing world, the finance world. You see
Speaker 2: that people are afraid of regretting selling a stock and
Speaker 2: then having it go up.
Speaker 3: They fear that more than they.
Speaker 2: Regret you know, holding on to it and having it
Speaker 2: go down for instance. That's just one example. But you
Speaker 2: end up making these irrational decisions all the time because
Speaker 2: you don't want to miss out right.
Speaker 3: It's kind of this fomo.
Speaker 2: That's brought to life, and it is compounded with this
Speaker 2: fascinating psychological phenomenon called the endowment effect, which is that
Speaker 2: when you already have something, it suddenly has much greater
Speaker 2: value than it did before you had it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So, one famous study is with a lottery ticket. I
Speaker 2: give you a lottery ticket and then you know, say
Speaker 2: every lottery ticket has an exact same chance of winning,
Speaker 2: and they say, hey, nay, do you want to swap
Speaker 2: lottery tickets with me? You're going to be irrationally averse
Speaker 2: to doing that, because what happens if you swap and
Speaker 2: then I end up with the winning ticket? Shit, right,
Speaker 2: like that was yours, and you don't think about what
Speaker 2: if I had the winning ticket and now you have it, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's just as likely.
Speaker 3: But that's not the way that the human brain works.
Speaker 2: Instead, you're like, what if I'm giving up my winning ticket?
Speaker 2: When you get something at auction, you're not going to
Speaker 2: sell it for more than you bought it for, right,
Speaker 2: Like you don't want to part with it. It happens
Speaker 2: over and over and over because once it's yours, it
Speaker 2: just acquires this irrational value.
Speaker 3: So we have these two different things, right.
Speaker 2: We have this fomo, We have this fear that like
Speaker 2: I'm going to regret what happens, and we have this
Speaker 2: endowment effect, and these two things compound each other where
Speaker 2: we end up making really irrational choices, especially when it
Speaker 2: comes to taking risks, and even if you know this,
Speaker 2: this can actually be a really tough one to fight.
Speaker 3: And I think poker illustrates.
Speaker 2: That very well because I definitely, you know, still have
Speaker 2: those spots where I won't do something, or like, we're
Speaker 2: all make an irrational decision even though I know what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, And I bet that after we record this,
Speaker 2: I am going to still make one of those errors. Right,
Speaker 2: And Poker's a game, right, so in a lot of sense,
Speaker 2: it should be easier for me to avoid that sort
Speaker 2: of regret a version when I'm playing poker.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 2: When in real life, you know, it's even harder. And
Speaker 2: even in poker, I can't avoid it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there's this particular one too that you
Speaker 5: get in kind of investing or sports betting for that matter, right,
Speaker 5: which is when you investing, yeah, and don't invest enough. Right,
Speaker 5: an investment I made six months ago that like, I
Speaker 5: think it's a good investment, not a small investment, but
Speaker 5: like I could have invested more, and I wish I
Speaker 5: had now based on performance of the It's like things
Speaker 5: like that can also produce regret. But that reflects hindsight bias.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and hindsight bias definitely comes into play and
Speaker 2: regret all the time. It's kind of what I was
Speaker 2: saying at the beginning that regret is one of those
Speaker 2: emotions that takes outcome into or potential outcome kind of
Speaker 2: into its calculus, right, and we shouldn't be doing that.
Speaker 2: So one of the things, Natee that you and I
Speaker 2: stress over and over is when you're making good decisions,
Speaker 2: you can't be outcome oriented, right. You have to separate
Speaker 2: yourself from the outcome of the decision. You have to
Speaker 2: just think through the process. Right. Am I making this
Speaker 2: decision for the correct reasons? Right? Is my expected value
Speaker 2: calculation rational? Am I using the correct inputs the correct factors?
Speaker 2: Am I waiting them correctly? Am I know calibrating my
Speaker 2: confidence levels correctly? Right?
Speaker 3: So if you think about the poker hand, like, am
Speaker 3: I thinking through? Do I have the right combination? Is
Speaker 3: this the right board? Am I in the right situation? Right?
Speaker 2: All of these different things to bluff or to fold
Speaker 2: or whatever it is?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: So I can't be thinking, well, you know what if
Speaker 2: I get called and I bust, right, and yet we
Speaker 2: think about that, we end up being way too results
Speaker 2: oriented and the regret can kick in after the fact. Right,
Speaker 2: So we might have made a rational decision and then
Speaker 2: feel regret about it afterwards because it ended up not
Speaker 2: going well. Right, Oh, if only I had folded pre flop,
Speaker 2: if only I had done this? Like that, that kind
Speaker 2: of counterfactual is very hindsight driven, very results driven, and
Speaker 2: being results driven and remembering and kind of dwelling on
Speaker 2: results is just the polar opposite of what we want
Speaker 2: to be doing when we're making good decisions.
Speaker 5: With the exception that like sometimes you pick up additional
Speaker 5: information that testifies how accurate your thesis was.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Let's say I'm playing poker and I think this opponent's
Speaker 5: we have a dynamic rivals and he's a big calling stations.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to make a big all in four
Speaker 5: better five bet with pocket aces because I think he'll
Speaker 5: call down as light as like ace queen offsuit and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. Right, and then they tank and tank
Speaker 5: and tank and they barely call with kings or Queen's Right,
Speaker 5: then your thesis was wrong.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: That person actually was terrified by you. They probably had
Speaker 5: a very strong hand and or you gave something away
Speaker 5: physically with the way you played the hand. Right, That's
Speaker 5: when you might go back and say I made a
Speaker 5: replaced deviation and it didn't work out that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good caveat That's how we want to
Speaker 2: use outcomes, right. We want to use them as a
Speaker 2: way of calibrating our decision process in that particular sense,
Speaker 2: as opposed to, you know, did it go well for
Speaker 2: me or did it go poorly for me?
Speaker 5: So to kind of summarize here, right, More people, more
Speaker 5: often than not, are paralyzed by regret or by the
Speaker 5: anticipation of future regret, and it makes it make worse
Speaker 5: decisions right the time when regret is most appropriate, I think,
Speaker 5: or when you knew a decision was bad and you
Speaker 5: did it anyway right, then I think you really have
Speaker 5: to do some kind of like life coaching, self diagnosis,
Speaker 5: professional diagnosed with yourself, or like why that happened?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: And then the one exception of being results oriented is
Speaker 5: when your thesis was wrong, right, and maybe you get
Speaker 5: the right outcome anyway, but like subsequent events prove that
Speaker 5: your thesis is wrong, and that's you know, again, we
Speaker 5: don't have perfect information either. It's not just that there's uncertainty,
Speaker 5: it's that we have incomplete information. But sometimes when you
Speaker 5: book a win, you forget about it. You can learn
Speaker 5: a lot from wins too.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And I would wrap this up with one
Speaker 2: more thing, which is that we should also remember that
Speaker 2: you know, you can regret doing something, but you can
Speaker 2: also regret not doing something right. So the choice not
Speaker 2: to act, the choice to kind of maintain status quo,
Speaker 2: is also a choice that can also lead to a
Speaker 2: lot of regret. And both of these things, both what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, Nate, and kind of the status quo
Speaker 2: by us. These can both lead us to irrational choices
Speaker 2: because of the desire to minimize regret.
Speaker 1: That's Nate Silver and Maria Khonnikova, hosts of Risky Business.
Speaker 1: The lesson I'm getting here is that our fear of
Speaker 1: making mistakes can ironically lead us to making some bad choices.
Speaker 1: One choice you won't regret is sticking around to hear
Speaker 1: the host of Heavyweight, Jonathan Goldstein talk with Sheila Hetty
Speaker 1: about some of the biggest mistakes she's ever made. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to this special edition of Cautionary Tales with me,
Speaker 1: Tim Harford. Do you know the show Heavyweight? It's another
Speaker 1: great one in the Pushkin Network. The host, Jonathan Goldstein
Speaker 1: helps people resolve problems from their pasts. Often that means
Speaker 1: coming to terms with their own mistakes. If you haven't
Speaker 1: heard the show, let me recommend the episode called Gregor.
Speaker 1: It's about a man who wants some CDs back and
Speaker 1: it sounds mondane I know, but trust me it isn't.
Speaker 1: For this special Mistakes episode, Jonathan wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: his friend, writer Sheila Hetty, who's probably best known for
Speaker 1: her book called Motherhood.
Speaker 6: Sheila, Hi, how are you Yeah? Nice to see you too,
Speaker 6: just as a glimpse, for a glimpse behind the curtain.
Speaker 6: Before we got on, we were texting a little bit
Speaker 6: and you had said, and this is a part of
Speaker 6: my gotcha journalism stylings, you'd said that you've never made
Speaker 6: a mistake. Well, I was joking. How do you How
Speaker 6: do you define a mistake or do you?
Speaker 4: I guess I think a mistake is something that you
Speaker 4: did with little thought that if you had put more
Speaker 4: thought into it, you would have made a different decision.
Speaker 6: Is there a difference between a regret? You see I
Speaker 6: traffic and regrets. That's my lingua franca, that's my bread
Speaker 6: and butter, my metia. Is there a difference between a
Speaker 6: mistake and a regret?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think you can regret anything, mistake or not. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can regret things that were even by all accounts,
Speaker 4: the best thing you could have done in that situation.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's a better way of putting in it.
Speaker 6: Do you ever use that button, you know, that button
Speaker 6: on the email thing where you could where you could
Speaker 6: take back your email? Yes?
Speaker 4: Often, really I wish they left it for about a
Speaker 4: minute though. It disappears too fast.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it does. It's almost like it's worthless maybe an hour.
Speaker 6: Is there a setting that where you could play with that,
Speaker 6: where you can make it like last an hour?
Speaker 3: No, I don't know, well, maybe there is.
Speaker 4: I think though sometimes you want to do things impulsively,
Speaker 4: like I sent an email to somebody recently, and then
Speaker 4: afterwards I thought why did I send that? But I
Speaker 4: think I sent it because if I'd thought about it,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have sent it.
Speaker 6: Was there any particular mistake that came to mind in
Speaker 6: thinking about all of these this lifetime and mistakes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I applied for a grant from the Canada
Speaker 4: Council and I gave them an old email address and
Speaker 4: then they wrote me and there they said, we have
Speaker 4: fifty thousand dollars for you. You got the grand And
Speaker 4: I only noticed that email because I checked my old
Speaker 4: email address. I remembered, oh, I have this old email address,
Speaker 4: and I checked it and I had like six emails
Speaker 4: for them saying if you don't reply by this date,
Speaker 4: we're not giving you the grand. And it was two
Speaker 4: months in the past, and I'd lost the money because
Speaker 4: I'd given them this old email address, and I thought
Speaker 4: I was completely broke. I had no money and I thought,
Speaker 4: I just lost fifty thousand dollars because I did this
Speaker 4: stupid thing of not fourn my emails to my new
Speaker 4: address because I would have had to pay, And at
Speaker 4: the time, I thought, why should I pay to forward
Speaker 4: my emails from this old address?
Speaker 6: And that was a really that.
Speaker 4: Just felt like a heart stopping mistake, Like, how could
Speaker 4: I have just lost this money like that?
Speaker 6: Wow, that's that's how long ago? Was this two months ago?
Speaker 6: And have you inquired? Have you looked into it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I called, I emailed. I was like, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 4: This is an old the email dress. I don't even
Speaker 4: know why I gave this old the email address. It
Speaker 4: was I applied so long ago, you know, I didn't
Speaker 4: realize da da da da, And then they were able
Speaker 4: to give it to me, But if I had checked,
Speaker 4: like a week later, they wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 4: reverse it. So that was just like, that's a kind
Speaker 4: of carelessness, which is common for me to be that careless,
Speaker 4: but it's never felt like it would have cost me
Speaker 4: such a I mean, the cost of that mistake would
Speaker 4: have been much worse than most of the mistakes I'd made,
Speaker 4: not aclude emotional mistakes.
Speaker 6: I'm really glad to hear that you were able to
Speaker 6: solve it in that space where you thought though that
Speaker 6: it was unsolvable and you just lost fifty thousand Canadian dollars.
Speaker 6: What was the feeling?
Speaker 3: Shame?
Speaker 6: Just shame, Like was there any attempt towards redemption, like
Speaker 6: I'm going to make this into a story or I'm
Speaker 6: going to dine out on this story to all my friends.
Speaker 4: No. I was just like I can't even tell my partner,
Speaker 4: I can't tell anyone about this, Like this is just
Speaker 4: too careless, this is too stupid, this is this has
Speaker 4: gone too far, like my carelessness has gone too far,
Speaker 4: And I just felt like how can I I was
Speaker 4: kind of like a ghast at myself, like I can't
Speaker 4: go on living this way with in such a It's
Speaker 4: like not reading the instructions. Oh that's another mistake I've
Speaker 4: made recently. I was going to do ketamine therapy for
Speaker 4: this article that I'm writing, and they said switch the
Speaker 4: tetamine around in your mouth and told it there for
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes and then spit it out. I'm in this clinic,
Speaker 4: and you know, I taped the whole the whole thing,
Speaker 4: audio taped the whole thing so I could just transcribe
Speaker 4: it later when I said on ketamine and I switched
Speaker 4: it around in my mouth for about thirty seconds and
Speaker 4: then I swallowed it, and the nurse and the therapist
Speaker 4: looked at me like, we told you three times to
Speaker 4: swish it around your mouth for fifty minutes and then
Speaker 4: spit it out, and I was like, you never said that,
Speaker 4: You never said that, And the nurse was gonna say,
Speaker 4: lots of people make that mistake, but then she had
Speaker 4: to catch herself and then she couldn't say lots of
Speaker 4: people made the mistake because everyone had heard that instruction
Speaker 4: switch it around for fifty minutes and.
Speaker 3: Spit it out.
Speaker 4: And then I listened to the tape when I got home,
Speaker 4: and they did say that twice, swish it around your
Speaker 4: mouth fifteen minutes and spit out, and I completely didn't
Speaker 4: hear it, and they couldn't get me stressed out about it,
Speaker 4: because otherwise I'd have this horrible trip. So they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's okay, it's okay. Oh it's okay, dearie. You know
Speaker 4: that you did that. So this is the kind of
Speaker 4: like mistake that I make all the time, just like
Speaker 4: not listening to instructions, not paying attention, thinking I know everything,
Speaker 4: I don't need to listen to the instructions.
Speaker 6: Wow. Wow, had anybody ever done that before in the history.
Speaker 4: I don't think if their clinic.
Speaker 6: I mean, it was fine.
Speaker 4: I just had like you just weren't supposed to do that.
Speaker 4: That's not how it's supposed to do.
Speaker 6: Do you do you swallow mouthwash after you gargle with it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: Okay, But the situation with the with the grant, once
Speaker 6: you found out like that, you lost it. Like I
Speaker 6: kind of liken that feeling too, when I'm like, say,
Speaker 6: carrying a bowl of cereal from the kitchen to the
Speaker 6: couch and I feel my I feel like I'm losing
Speaker 6: my grasp, it's gonna fall, it's gonna I'm tripping, I'm
Speaker 6: time slows down, and I'm just like, fuck it, fuck
Speaker 6: it all. And it's almost like a very self punishing
Speaker 6: sort of feeling of like you deserve this, I'm going
Speaker 6: to really wallow in this, like I practically like throw
Speaker 6: the bowl of cereal out of my hands against the
Speaker 6: wall to make it as terrible as possible. Is there
Speaker 6: a bit of masochism?
Speaker 4: Not in the Grant one, but what you just said
Speaker 4: reminds me of a time that I didn't make a mistake,
Speaker 4: which I was in some gallery art gallery in Toronto,
Speaker 4: and I don't know how this happened, but I had
Speaker 4: this feeling like somebody threw me their baby.
Speaker 6: It was like a child.
Speaker 4: Like I was on the ground and somebody threw me
Speaker 4: this child and I leaned backwards and kind of like
Speaker 4: fell backwards to catch it. And I remember thinking, in
Speaker 4: that moment, you cannot drop this baby.
Speaker 3: And I didn't, and.
Speaker 4: I remember feeling like most situations in life, there is
Speaker 4: this margin of who cares if I dropped the cereal
Speaker 4: or not.
Speaker 6: And it made me.
Speaker 4: Realize that in most situations, I would like, like you
Speaker 4: throw the cereal against the wall, and I was just like,
Speaker 4: this is not one of those times you have to
Speaker 4: put every cell into catching that baby properly, Whereas most
Speaker 4: of the time you put half the cells into catching
Speaker 4: the baby, or like letting the cereal not fall on
Speaker 4: the other half into letting it fall, and you kind
Speaker 4: of leave it to chance whether you drop the cereal
Speaker 4: or the baby or not. But I was like, this
Speaker 4: is not one of those times. And so it did
Speaker 4: make me realize like how permissive I am of mistakes
Speaker 4: in general, because I was like this, this is not
Speaker 4: like all those other times.
Speaker 6: No, this is a great point, but we just need
Speaker 6: to rewind a little bit for those who maybe aren't
Speaker 6: as into the Canadian conceptual art scene where people walk
Speaker 6: into galleries and have babies thrown at them.
Speaker 4: What happened. It was like a social I don't even
Speaker 4: know if a show was going on. It was a
Speaker 4: bunch of artists hanging around, and how could somebody throw
Speaker 4: a baby? It wasn't a baby. It was like a
Speaker 4: one year two year old. It was like it was
Speaker 4: a somewhere between baby and toddler.
Speaker 6: But they threw They threw a human being at you.
Speaker 4: Something happened that I had to catch a child. I
Speaker 4: don't really the emotion in trying to catch the child.
Speaker 4: The resources that my body put towards catching the child
Speaker 4: were so intense, right that I forgot how that situation
Speaker 4: actually unfolded. But somehow there was a child. It was
Speaker 4: with one person, And then I wish I could explain
Speaker 4: it better.
Speaker 6: No, No, I think I'm getting a bit. I mean,
Speaker 6: I really like the conclusion, which is sort of like
Speaker 6: you realize that mistakes are a luxury sometimes, like if
Speaker 6: you just feel like there is no margin for error,
Speaker 6: that you can't you just can't allow yourself that, then
Speaker 6: you don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's pretty much the only time in my
Speaker 4: life where I ever felt like there is no margin forever.
Speaker 4: If you don't catch this baby, it'll split its head
Speaker 4: open and die. Like I was like, you cannot, And
Speaker 4: I think it made me realize how usually I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe maybe I'll can't catch that mistake, or maybe I
Speaker 4: won't maybe I'll let the cereal fall.
Speaker 6: Who cares?
Speaker 4: Like, Yeah, exactly, Like you say, the mistakes are kind
Speaker 4: of a luxury.
Speaker 6: Does that suggest that you can avoid mistakes if you
Speaker 6: try hard enough?
Speaker 4: I think I think that's what most people would believe.
Speaker 6: How hard do you think you personally? How hard do
Speaker 6: you think a person should should try.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't I probably don't try that hard because I
Speaker 4: figure things will work out.
Speaker 6: In the end. You do feel that way, Yeah, I have.
Speaker 4: A basic optimistic feeling about my life, and I'm basically
Speaker 4: an optimistic person. So maybe that's why I don't try
Speaker 4: so hard to avoid mistakes, because I figure everything's going
Speaker 4: to work out.
Speaker 3: So I swallowed the kind I mean.
Speaker 4: Like I had a bit of a hangover the next
Speaker 4: day in the day after from it, like I felt
Speaker 4: really tired, but like it's I'm not going to die.
Speaker 4: Like if I was going to die, they wouldn't have
Speaker 4: given it you to swirl in your mouth.
Speaker 6: You know, they have to take into account that people
Speaker 6: aren't going to listen all the time and they don't
Speaker 6: deserve to die because of it. So how do you
Speaker 6: or do you make peace with a mistake?
Speaker 4: Just make a new one.
Speaker 1: There's a new season of Heavyweight out now, and you
Speaker 1: can find a link to it in this episode show notes. Now,
Speaker 1: don't go anywhere. When we get back from the break,
Speaker 1: I've got one last cautionary tale for you. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to this special edition of Cautionary Tales with me Tim Harford,
Speaker 1: and now for what will hopefully be our final mistake.
Speaker 1: This episode, I've got a cautionary tail for you. Passengers
Speaker 1: on Air Canada flight one four three had the pleasure
Speaker 1: of flying on a brand new Boeing seven sixty seven,
Speaker 1: albeit a Bowing sixty seven with a brand new dodgy
Speaker 1: fuel gauge. The airline knew that the fuel gauge was unreliable,
Speaker 1: so Captain Bob Pearson and his crew needed to manually
Speaker 1: calculate how much fuel the plane needed to get from
Speaker 1: Montreal to Edmonton, plus the usual reserve. Unfortunately, Air Canada,
Speaker 1: like Canada itself, was in the slow and confusing process
Speaker 1: for switching from imperial to metric units. Most of the
Speaker 1: planes were set up and labeled for Imperial measures, but
Speaker 1: this new plane wasn't. The upshot of all this confusion
Speaker 1: was that the plane was actually fueled up, not with
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand, six hundred kilograms of fuel, but with
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand, six hundred pounds, less than half of
Speaker 1: what was intended. How, how how did this happen? Well,
Speaker 1: the manual check didn't use any measure as clear as kilograms. Instead,
Speaker 1: the crew needed to convert a dipstick measure in centimeters
Speaker 1: into a volume in liters into a mass in kilograms
Speaker 1: or pounds. That required a conversion factor. And the conversion
Speaker 1: factor supplied to the refuelers and written on all the
Speaker 1: older planes was the old one for pounds, not the
Speaker 1: new one for kilograms. Did you get that? Air Canada
Speaker 1: hadn't made it clear? In any case? Whose job it
Speaker 1: was to do all this arithmetic. In the old planes,
Speaker 1: it would be the third flight crew member, the flight engineer.
Speaker 1: But this new plane just had a pilot and a
Speaker 1: co pilot, and neither of them had been trained to
Speaker 1: do this tricky task. One mechanical technician tried and gave up.
Speaker 1: Another got most of the way through but ran out
Speaker 1: a room on the slip of paper he was using.
Speaker 1: He decided to leave it to the pilot and co pilot.
Speaker 1: Did I mention that neither of them had been trained
Speaker 1: to perform the calculation. You might think that this story
Speaker 1: was doomed to end in disaster, but this is a
Speaker 1: very special story. There's a lucky twist. The plane was
Speaker 1: scheduled to make a short hop down to Ottawa to
Speaker 1: pick up more passengers before making the long journey west
Speaker 1: to Edmonton with a dangerously low level of fuel, and
Speaker 1: during that stopover, Captain Pearson, wary of his disconnected fuel gauge,
Speaker 1: decided to double check the fuel levels. Phew Alas, there
Speaker 1: is an unlucky twist to the lucky twist. In Ottawa,
Speaker 1: the flight crew, still untrained and still supplied with confusing
Speaker 1: conversion factors, mixed up metric and Imperial units in exactly
Speaker 1: the same way. Flight one four to three duly took
Speaker 1: off for Edmonton without enough fuel to get it anywhere
Speaker 1: near its destination. In the cockpit, the first hint of
Speaker 1: trouble came almost halfway to Edmonton. Four short, sharp beeps,
Speaker 1: a totally unfamiliar alarm, meaning what left forward fuel pump
Speaker 1: had failed? That's odd, Captain Pearson flicked through the manual.
Speaker 1: There were six of these pumps, so losing one was
Speaker 1: no disaster, except a second pump had failed. Now both
Speaker 1: of the left hand fuel tank pumps were out of action.
Speaker 1: Oh fuck, said Captain Pearson. He gave the order to
Speaker 1: divert to the nearest major airport, Winnipeg. Hopefully at Winnipeg
Speaker 1: they could figure out what had gone wrong in the
Speaker 1: left hand fuel tank. Winnipeg Center, Air Canada one four to.
Speaker 2: Three Air Canada one for three Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, we have a problem. Captain Pearson knew that
Speaker 1: if there was a problem with the left fuel tank,
Speaker 1: the left engine might also fail. Landing with only one
Speaker 1: engine it wouldn't be easy. They were one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty eight miles north of Winnipeg. Pearson began a slow descent,
Speaker 1: and then four more beeps, and another four and a
Speaker 1: moment later, Pearson and his crew realized that all six
Speaker 1: fuel pumps had failed. Pearson told the flight crew to
Speaker 1: prepare for an emergency landing at Winnipeg. Minutes ticked by.
Speaker 1: Captain Pearson and his colleagues still hadn't quite realized how
Speaker 1: serious the situation was. They were in the middle of
Speaker 1: a gradual descent, but that meant losing height. They would
Speaker 1: soon wish they hadn't lost. For the last of those
Speaker 1: aggressive four beeps sounded. Number one engine cut out, then
Speaker 1: the number two engine, and if you were wandering about
Speaker 1: number three engine, there wasn't a number three engine. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it
Speaker 1: was when very shortly after afterwards, every light in the
Speaker 1: cockpit went out. The electricity in a Boeing seven sixty
Speaker 1: seven comes from a generator powered by the engines. Bob
Speaker 1: Pearson hadn't just lost his engines, he'd lost all his instruments,
Speaker 1: and he'd lost the flaps and slats, the rudder, and
Speaker 1: the ailerons, even the undercarriage. Captain Pearson was now in
Speaker 1: complete control of the airplane, as long as he didn't
Speaker 1: want to speed up, break, change altitude, change direction, stay
Speaker 1: airborne or land. There were two glimmers of hope. The
Speaker 1: plane was equipped with an emergency air turbine, effectively a
Speaker 1: windmill that could be dropped into place near one of
Speaker 1: the wheels and use the wind whistling past the fuselage
Speaker 1: to supply a little bit of electrical power. The fl
Speaker 1: light crew flipped to the manual, found the procedure, and
Speaker 1: unlocked the emergency turbine. The lights flickered back on and
Speaker 1: Captain Pearson now had some limited control. Most of the
Speaker 1: controls no longer work, but by pulling hard on the sticks,
Speaker 1: like a driver of a car with power steering disconnected,
Speaker 1: Pearson could change the elevation and direction of the plane.
Speaker 1: What a shame he didn't have any engines. The co
Speaker 1: pilot relayed the news to Winnipeg, asking them to clear
Speaker 1: the area and get the emergency crews ready. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't clear how the plane would even aim at Winnipeg,
Speaker 1: let alone travels sixty five miles to reach it, or
Speaker 1: is that one hundred and four kilometers whatever. As Pearson
Speaker 1: hastily calculated his rate of dissent. He realized there was
Speaker 1: absolutely no way they could glide all the way to Winnipeg,
Speaker 1: and the second glimmer, a Boeing seven six seven, might
Speaker 1: be a terrible glider that Captain Bob Pearson was an
Speaker 1: excellent glider pilot. Gimley Motorsports Park boasts a dragstrip, a
Speaker 1: carting track, a motocross track, and a long racetrack. The
Speaker 1: racetrack is so long because it used to be a
Speaker 1: base for the Royal Canadian Air Force. The Air Force
Speaker 1: base had closed back in nineteen seventy one, and by
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three it had been a bustling home for
Speaker 1: motorsports for more than a decade. On July the twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, Gimbley Motorsports Park was hosting a family
Speaker 1: day featuring races on the old runway. The area around
Speaker 1: the decommissioned runway was bustling with camper vans, tents and cars.
Speaker 1: Children were riding their bikes up and down the tarmac.
Speaker 1: None of this, alas was known to the crew of
Speaker 1: Air Canada one four to three or to air traffic
Speaker 1: control at Winnipeg.
Speaker 3: Why would it.
Speaker 1: It's not as if the Winnipeg Sports Car Club is
Speaker 1: in the habit of sharing their timetable with Air Canada
Speaker 1: after all. But up in the cockpit, Captain Pearson's co
Speaker 1: pilot had suggested trying to glide in and land on
Speaker 1: the old Gimli Air Strip. It wasn't even listed as
Speaker 1: a possible landing strip, but the co pilot had been
Speaker 1: stationed there as an Air Force officer years before, and
Speaker 1: there was nowhere else they could reach. But as the
Speaker 1: plane descended towards the air strip, the crew tried to
Speaker 1: manually lower and lock the undercarriage with the front wheel
Speaker 1: fighting against the wind. They didn't succeed. Swooping out of
Speaker 1: the Canadian skies towards the only strip of Concer they
Speaker 1: could find a safe landing seemed an almost impossible dream.
Speaker 1: The plane was hard to control, very much at risk
Speaker 1: of touching down one wingtip or another and flipping into
Speaker 1: a fatal cartwheel. It was traveling too fast and there
Speaker 1: was no obvious way to slow its descent, and if
Speaker 1: they did land, there were no ambulances or fire crews
Speaker 1: at the old Gimley Air Force Base. In fact, as
Speaker 1: far as Captain Pearson and his team knew, there was
Speaker 1: nobody at Gimley at all. It was at about this
Speaker 1: point that Pearson noticed three children on bicycles in the
Speaker 1: middle of the runway ahead of him. Bicycles or no bicycles.
Speaker 1: Pearson was coming in too quickly, and if he couldn't
Speaker 1: slow down, everyone in the plane was doomed. He tried
Speaker 1: a maneuver that was common enough with gliders but seemed
Speaker 1: absurd in a passenger jet, Using all his might to
Speaker 1: move the stubborn controls, he used the ailerons on the
Speaker 1: wings to steer the plane left, and the rudder to
Speaker 1: steer the plane right. A plane's nose pointed left, its
Speaker 1: tail stuck out to the right, but the plane itself
Speaker 1: kept moving straight forward. It had entered a side slip,
Speaker 1: the aerial equivalent of a skid. The stunt dramatically increased
Speaker 1: the drag on the plane, which slowed and flocked out
Speaker 1: of the sky. The curious thing about a glider is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't make a lot of noise. This is
Speaker 1: true even if the glider happens to be a Boeing
Speaker 1: seven sixty seven. The happy families camping at the far
Speaker 1: end of the runway got their first warning that they
Speaker 1: were about to have an unusual family day at give
Speaker 1: motors Boards Park when they heard a bag and an
Speaker 1: unholy scraping sound from down the racetrack. There in the distance,
Speaker 1: in a flurry of sparks and a cloud of white smoke,
Speaker 1: was a Boeing seven sixty seven. The three boys on
Speaker 1: bicycles were pedaling furiously towards them, yelling something indistinct but urgent,
Speaker 1: And then a moment later that Boeing seven sixty seven
Speaker 1: wasn't in the distance anymore. It was sliding down the
Speaker 1: runway towards them, all very very fast. The planes undercarriage
Speaker 1: had collapsed, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Speaker 1: The plane stop short, the inflatable slides were deployed. The passengers,
Speaker 1: sobbing with relief or stunned into silence, scrambled off the
Speaker 1: plane to find themselves the new main attraction of a
Speaker 1: family motorsport festival, with carters hurrying up with portable fire extinguishers,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't any fuel left to catch fire. Passengers
Speaker 1: leaving on the rear slides suffered a painful landing because
Speaker 1: the back of the plane was sticking up in an
Speaker 1: undignified fashion, and the slides weren't quite long enough. But nobody,
Speaker 1: either in the plane or on the ground, suffered serious harm.
Speaker 1: But this is cautionary tales. We can't just say they
Speaker 1: all lived happily ever after. We need to learn a
Speaker 1: lesson from this fiasco, and perhaps it's this organizational memory matters.
Speaker 1: Just as British Waterways had long ago forgotten that the
Speaker 1: Chesterfield Canal had plugs, Air Canada had forgotten that sometimes
Speaker 1: you need to calculate a fuel loads annually. The flight
Speaker 1: engineers who once had to do the job no longer existed,
Speaker 1: so it was nobody in particular's responsibility to get the
Speaker 1: job right, not to mention that the documentation made the
Speaker 1: task extremely challenging. Doing a complex piece of arithmetic suddenly
Speaker 1: became a matter of life and death, and the crew
Speaker 1: had forgotten how to do it. Thank goodness that Captain
Speaker 1: Pearson hadn't forgotten how to glide. He managed to get
Speaker 1: his malfunctioning passenger aircraft to fly forty miles without fuel,
Speaker 1: to touch down within eight hundred feet of the start
Speaker 1: of a short six eight hundred foot airstrip, and to
Speaker 1: make that touchdown if not gentle, then, shall we say decisive.
Speaker 1: Other pilots have been given this scenario to try out
Speaker 1: in a flight simulator. The usual result is a catastrophic crash.
Speaker 1: There is a whole catalog of cautionary tales full of
Speaker 1: epic mistakes that I hope we can all learn from.
Speaker 1: And if you're all caught up on those stories, We've
Speaker 1: just launched a cautionary Club with bonus episodes every month,
Speaker 1: regular updates from me, and a newsletter that includes some
Speaker 1: extra curiosities. I hope you'll sign up at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Cautionary Club. This episode was written by me,
Speaker 1: Tim Harford and produced by Georgia Mills and Isaac Carter,
Speaker 1: with help from Marilyn Rust. Thanks also to Nate Silver
Speaker 1: and Maria Konnikova from Risky Business, Jonathan Goldstein from Heavyweight,
Speaker 1: and his special guest Sheila Hetty. This episode was edited
Speaker 1: by Sarah Nix. The sound design and original music are
Speaker 1: the work of Pascal Wise. The show wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller,