26 Massively Expensive Mistakes Made Throughout Human History That Should Serve As Lessons

It sounds obvious that we can and should learn from the mistakes of others. However, things aren’t as simple. Often, people fail to learn from their own mistakes, repeating the very same behaviors with negative consequences again. And again. And again.

According to Professor Pragya Agarwal from Loughborough University, when it comes to thinking, behavioral patterns, and decision-making, people often repeat mistakes.

“The reason can be found in the way our brain processes information and creates templates that we refer to again and again. These templates are essentially shortcuts, which help us make decisions in the real world. But these shortcuts, known as heuristics, can also make us repeat our errors.”

Agarwal argues that human beings aren’t naturally rational. And they tend to filter out the noise from information overload in order to avoid becoming confused and exhausted.

The professor notes that people’s brains are lazy, and it takes significant cognitive effort to change the mental shortcuts that they have already built up. So, even if human beings are conscious of repeating the same mistakes, they still tend to fall back on old behavior patterns.

“We only see parts of the world. We tend to notice things that are repeating, whether there are any patterns or not, and we tend to preserve memory by generalising and resorting to type. We also draw conclusions from sparse data and use cognitive shortcuts to create a version of reality that we implicitly want to believe in. This creates a reduced stream of incoming information, which helps us connect dots and fill in gaps with stuff we already know,” Agarwal writes.

That’s not to say that we’re completely doomed. We can, after all, change our behaviors and develop new habits.

One thing that we can do is become more comfortable making mistakes in the first place. Feeling ashamed of our failures and hiding them increases the probability that we’ll repeat them.

However, when we don’t beat ourselves up over our mistakes and can accept them in public, we can take in new information that helps us correct them.

Once you’ve finished reading through this list, we’d like to hear your insights.

Which of these historical moments surprised you the most or gave you a fresh perspective on the world?

What do you personally think were the biggest, most impactful disasters in human history? What do you think everyone can do to really learn from the past and avoid making the same mistakes in the future?

On a deeply personal level, how good would you say you are at learning from your own mistakes? Share your thoughts in the comments down below.