# Replying to "Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors" \[Dface\]

**URL:** https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors-dface/2235
**Category:** Friendly
**Created:** [August 28, 2026, 9:46pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors-dface/2235 "2026-08-28T21:46:59Z")
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### Author: ![Dface](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/user_avatar/discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/dface/32/3926_2.png) [@Dface](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Dface)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2026, 10:18pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors-dface/2235/2 "2026-08-28T22:18:38Z")

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> [@Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors/2202/1):
>
> After you make an error, you should investigate what caused the error, and what changes you should make to prevent other errors due to the same underlying cause.

Errors happen a lot. They happen when you do difficult things. They happen rarely when you’re really good at something. If you don’t run into any errors then I don’t think there’s a chance to improve that and yourself.

If you investigate the error then you may find the cause. Is that different than investigating the cause of the error?

Errors have a cause that could be investigated. That’s like being a detective and finding who was the killer. They find stuff out through clues and get to the bottom of things.

What does the cause of an error look like? Is it an idea? Is it a policy? How do you know something was the cause vs. just something that resulted? You gotta have reasons for that. I think looking up what the definition of cause would be good here.

> [@Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors/2202/1):
>
> and what changes you should make to prevent other errors due to the same underlying cause.

You could change how a plan or action happens so you don’t run into the error. What’s being discussed in the quote above looks different tho.

There’s a cause that makes other errors happen not just one error. Also, you can make more than one change. It’s not just one change to prevent the errors from the same underlying cause.

You could make changes to the errors I think or you could make changes to the underlying cause. The latter sounds like less work. It may be more work to investigate the cause, but it’s more worth it.

Here’s part of my response from last time:

> [@Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors/2202/2):
>
> I almost misread the last clause cuz what I got first from it is that I should prevent the errors at any costs. Like I should completely stop doing the activity. That prevents the error from happening at all. That didn’t sound right tho cuz your goal would be to do the activity or really to get something done a certain way. If you stop then you won’t get it done. That’s an error.

I think I got the wrong idea about what “prevent” means. I got a bad connotation of the word. That or I got the wrong meaning of it. You’d still want to accomplish your goal, you wouldn’t just completely give up. Now tho I think you could also think about many clear goals to choose a goal that doesn’t fail at the same error.

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