I misread a bug report right today and almost escalated the issue with the customer.
I shouldn't have dealt with the issue at all because I'm down with a cold and I know quite well that it reduces my mental capacity. But I saw the email and immediately thought: That's no bug. I covered exactly that case! And wrote back a small reply pointing to the change request specifying that. Shortly the project manager repeated the point - and quoted the spec. Full of self-righteousness I wrote a lengthy reply to the customer taking the report apart and quoting lots of spec (wrongly). The only thing the prevented a further escalation was that I realized that this was an instance of a pattern encountered earlier. Namely that even if I was right it might hurt my intermediary. So I decided to send the mail to him first. Luckily. Shortly I got a call, he wanted it explained and it became clear that the spec was right but the implementation indeed wrong - and my memory of the expected result clouded. The actual fix was easy. But the time collecting the reply and clarifying was still wasted.
Lessons: 1) Don't trust your mental capacity if ill. 2) Let hot mails cool or route them thru a supervisor.
I am too down with cold (again, was so just 4 weeks ago) and sitting in the middle of a super important meeting. I think I explained the same thing 3 times in a row and people look a bit funny. But I think they understand it. I went through 30 tissues.
We looked at the cloudy night sky and thought it would be interesting to share the ways in which, in the past, we made mistakes we would have been able to overcome, if only we had been stronger as rationalists. The experience felt valuable and humbling. So why not do some more of it on Lesswrong?
An antithesis to the Bragging Thread, this is a thread to share where we made mistakes. Where we knew we could, but didn't. Where we felt we were wrong, but carried on anyway.
As with the recent group bragging thread, anything you've done wrong since the comet killed the dinosaurs is fair game, and if it happens to be a systematic mistake that over long periods of time systematically curtailed your potential, that others can try to learn avoiding, better.
This thread is an attempt to see if there are exceptions to the cached thought that life experience cannot be learned but has to be lived. Let's test this belief together!