Importance of Failure Data

Failure Teaches More than Miraculous Success

Failure is very important, and gathering the right failure data is even more important. For instance, it starts when animals are born, such as humans. The life of a baby is full of failures. Watching a baby elephant learn how to use its trunk was very interesting. Back to humans! Human babies are master experimenters and experiment for the longest time into their 30s. But some never trust their instincts completely and continue experiencing and learning new things mainly from their failures; these are your atypical scientists. Babies have the drive to test everything around them. Thanks to our Robotic Education System, we kill this innate behaviour very quickly. I hope technology will get us to a point where we have individualized homeschool-based learning through online channels. This is where the metaverse for education comes in. 

Failure data can be the difference between successful leading individuals or companies and those that are just existing. On successful individuals! We call them experts and when on top, thought leaders. These individuals have amassed a lot of failure data in their lives. In simple terms, an expert is someone who has failed and succeeded in many ways that they almost know all failure avenues. They know more about what not to do.

An example of the importance of failure data in business is SpaceX Falcon 1 rockets; multimillions went up in flames when the Falcon 1 rockets failed three consecutive times, and engineers were left to pick up the pieces (Top 5 SpaceX failures). This also happened during the developement of the German V2 rocket. Every failure took place in under 10 minutes. Becoming a leader requires one to fail first and learn from their failure data. That's intellectual property. This goes with what entrepreneurs call failing fast. The Edison Illuminating Company had failure data on the making of light bulbs, hence the first and stayed leaders in making light bulbs. Recent failure data from SpaceX was the failure of Booster 7 on the launch pad during a test. The SpaceX team is busy with root-cause analysis, and once they find the root cause, only they in the whole world will know what not to do when one is trying to light up 29 raptor engines. Most car companies failed at copying Ford in the early 1900s. Other companies died during the dot-com era. Most EV and Space companies (startups) will fail in this decade. Unfortunately, failure comes with humiliation and puts big smiles on your enemy's faces (smile xo tsema ndleve).

First try success is elusive. Although with a heavy heart, but when I look back, I enjoyed having my Physics and Electronics experiments (Lab practicals) fail or computer code fail to run and then troubleshot. This is where most people get thrown off. This makes or breaks future Scientists and Engineers. STEM is about having a gut big enough to handle failure and adjust many many times. These subjects are for those humble enough to accept that they are not as smart as they think and strive to be better after every failure to achieve a goal. One always learns a lot from such failures. These days with simulation technologies, at least failure has very little physical consequences in the real world. Unfortunately, academic publications focus on publishing successful results/experiments and not failed ones; there are more failed experiments than successful ones. Maybe if they published failure, more people would know what not to pursue or pursue but tweak certain parameters. And perhaps humanity would progress a little bit faster.

In summary, we need more failure data. Somehow I think if we can get to a point where we enable people to handle humiliation from failure, like failing a Maths test, we will travel to other galaxies, very soon.