Why is it so fun when things go wrong? Are we really that cynical a species? Do we just wish to see other people fail so we feel better about ourselves? I’m not a fan of that outlook on life. I think we’re all deeply empathetic, and we only enjoy failure when we can kind of relate to it. Because deep down, we all know that we’re imperfect and there is nothing we can do to hide that. We can walk around with our adult jobs and fancy clothes and specially-designed personalities, but eventually something will fall through the cracks, and we will be exposed as the weirdos that we truly are. There is nothing we can do to stop that. So when we see it happen to someone else, we breathe a sigh of relief. The world won’t end if we slip up. In fact, it might make other people smile. 

Mistakes are what make humans human. It’s something we’re thinking a lot about these days, in the new age of computer intelligence. It’s important to define what makes us us, so we know where our values still lie. And messing up is something that humans are uniquely good at. We all have different experiences of the world that make our brains function differently, which makes us make different decisions. There is no one way that humans behave. We’re surprising each other all the time, and we like it that way. Imagine if we were all the same and never messed up?