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    Menschen unterschätzen systematisch, wie oft auf der Welt etwas schiefgeht – eine Voreingenommenheit, die Forscher als „Fehlerlücke“ bezeichnen.

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    22 Kommentare

    1. SSLByron on

      Seems like a fascinating subject but the site is genuinely unreadable on mobile.

      Look, something went wrong.

    2. kon--- on

      Don’t look at me. I am fully aware of the fact that the universe is never not messing with us both as individuals and as a collective.

      Indeed, are very existance, is the cosmos using us to amuse itself.

    3. renzd on

      100%. I recently immigrated from a 3rd world country to Europe. I’m 35 and I don’t think I’ll get a driving license here. I’ve been driving since I was 14 in a country which collectively follow no traffic laws. To balance that, I became an extremely defensive driver and we are taught to be extremely careful around vehicles back home. I’ve never been in an accident, luckily. But seeing how casual people are here about riding a 120km per hour steel killing machine was enough to even put me off carpooling. I’m taking the bus or the train as much as possible.

    7. mvea on

      New psychology research shows people consistently underestimate how often things go wrong across society
      by Mane Kara-Yakoubian April 21, 2026 Reading Time: 4 mins read

      People systematically underestimate how often things go wrong in the world—a bias researchers call the “failure gap.” This mega-project was published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology.

      https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspa0000468

    8. swisstraeng on

      The aviation industry is very well aware of this. Since failures are to be brought to a minimum. See „Human Factors“.

      The issue is that imagining failure cases takes effort, and humans are lazy. In addition we evolved not to; thinking about failures is stressful and we want to avoid that naturally.

      Failures are also underrepresented due to consequences and fear of being judged, yet another thing the aviation industry takes care of.

      And we as a society does nit put an emphasis on avoiding the failures of the past sadly.

    10. low_amplitude on

      One of the hardest lessons we learn growing up is that adults rarely know what they’re doing and our society barely functions.

    11. NewsCards on

      > One limitation is that the failure gap may depend on context and culture; because most participants came from Western, educated populations, it remains unclear whether the same pattern generalizes globally.

      I expect this plays a big part.

      I’ll admit, as someone who lives in a relatively high income, Democrat-led US West Coast area, despite my efforts to stay informed about world events, I live in a bubble of luxury compared to the rest of the world.

      I don’t go out expecting to get shot or stabbed (yes, despite the jokes from non-Americans about America), I don’t expect roadways to crumble, sinkholes to appear, buildings to collapse, bombs to suddenly rain down on me, even though the likelihood of all of that is probably a lot higher than I expect.

    12. IMayBeRobot on

      When I was a postdoc, it became clear that one of my studies wasn’t going to work. I mentioned it off handedly to my grad student friend. He was really upset on my behalf, but I assured him it was no big deal, projects fail all the time. To prove the point (and reassure myself), I turned to a full professor sitting at the table. This was the top guy in the department. „Hey John, what percent of your projects fail before you get any results?“ He thought for a second, and said, „About half, I suppose.“ 

    13. OnlyKey5675 on

      This is common in health care. Especially when it comes to getting a diagnosis for uncommon ailments.

    15. jackie-daytonuh on

      These “people” are obviously not from Eastern Europe. We are pleasantly surprised when things go well.

    16. Otaraka on

      There is a sort of irony that I had to go to the article to find a concrete example of what they meant by failure.

      The examples given were three species going extinct when people notice the one being reported and 5 weapons going undetected for every one reported that’s missed ie more an underestimate of true failure rates due to reporting biasses.  So possibly not quite what people might think.  Or exactly as expected maybe, but it wasn’t what I thought they meant.

    17. CountlessStories on

      >Conversely, when the information they encountered accurately reflected real-world failure rates, the gap narrowed. In contexts where discussing failure had become more normalized (e.g., public conversations about sexual misconduct), the usual pattern weakened or even reversed, suggesting that visibility and openness play a key role in shaping perceptions.

      Good thing the internet is so consistently negative. surprised it hasn’t fixed this bias alone.

    19. BenjaminHamnett on

      That’s funny, I always assume everything goes wrong and I make a big deal to explicitly be verbally grateful and point it out to everyone when anything works out. Even if it’s just a paid professional being highly paid to do a simple job.

      But it is funny. Every time people talk about plans I’m always like “what? Are we just assuming things will work out somehow?”

      I think “it’s the planning, not the plan” reinforces this. Of course nothing ever goes to plan, but we can’t really make contingency plans for everything. People just gotta not expect things to work out

    20. loves_grapefruit on

      This is the main problem with conspiracy theories. They don’t take into account how hard it is to make a complex plan proceed correctly, much less keep it a massive secret with the perfect cooperation of all persons involved. Spend some time in the military and you can see just how easy it is for one little thing to throw off the whole day, and how often it happens.

    21. RustyImpactWrench on

      My progression as an engineer:

      Was a bad engineer, was surprised when things didn’t work the first time.

      Was a bad engineer, wasn’t surprised when things didn’t work the first time.

      Was an OK engineer, was surprised when things worked the first time.

      Was a good engineer, was surprised when things didn’t work the first time.

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