“It made sense at the time.” We use this phrase to explain bad decisions, failed plans, and historical disasters. But most of the time, it’s true — and that’s what makes failure so hard to see coming.
History is full of choices that look baffling in hindsight and perfectly reasonable in the moment. This episode explores why smart people make decisions that later seem impossible to understand — and how good ideas quietly age into bad outcomes.
By the way, if you’d like more stories like this, you’re always welcome to hang around and binge for a bit.
CHAPTER / TIMESTAMP
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00:00 — OPEN:
01:00 — THE PHRASE THE ENDS DISCUSSION
02:18 — THE PATTERN: FIRE
03:10 — THE PATTERN: TITANIC
03:36 — THE PATTERN: Financial Bubbles
04:38 — THE PATTERN REPEATS
05:12 — HINDSIGHT
06:17 — AVOIDING FAILURE MODE
06:58 — TAKING IT PERSONAL
07:25 — AN OUNCE
Additional Reading and Reference
1) Hindsight Bias — Foundational
Fischhoff (1975)
Hindsight ≠ Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment Under Uncertainty
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1738364
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2) Decision-Making Under Uncertainty — Cognitive Mechanism
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
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3) Disaster Psychology — Human Behavior Under Threat
Why People Don’t Heed Warnings
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7153921/
This directly supports:
• Titanic behavior
• evacuation hesitation
• normalcy bias
• risk calibration
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4) System Failure — Why Collapse Happens
High Reliability Organizations (Weick & Sutcliffe)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1765804/
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5) Psychological Pattern Support
Narrative Fallacy — Taleb
https://fs.blog/narrative-fallacy/
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6) Risk Psychology Authority
Risk Perception — Paul Slovic
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226437543
#DecisionMaking #Psychology #HumanBehavior #Failure #History #Disasters #Hindsight
