
You learn next to no ‘content’ from a mistake. By content here, I mean information that we need. Let’s say, for example, that you’re putting a wifi code into your computer and you get it wrong by one letter. You remembered the rest of the code correctly, but there’s one letter that is eluding you. You try a ‘t’, and it’s wrong.
As a grown-up, you resist smashing the machine and instead have another go - invoking your resilience. What do we know about the correct letter? Only that it is not a ‘t’, so we have learned not to input ‘t’ again. But that leaves at least 25 other options (before we consider caps, symbols and numbers). How do we know which it is? Not from the mistake. Only by guessing correctly or remembering the right letter or looking it up again in our records. Only if we can enter it correctly next time have we learnt anything. We have learned from the success.