# 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: [September 4, 2026, 11:15pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/replying-to-postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors-dface/2235/28 "2026-09-04T23:15:02Z")

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I’m going to write about the following paragraph:

> [@Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors/2202/1):
>
> It’s also important to have high standards. People often do a superficial postmortem investigation and then come up with some kind of explanation of the error, and then want to move on. Their explanation is usually either a well known idea or else a denial that there’s anything important going on – a claim that they made a random error that isn’t due to some meaningful pattern. You should aim to actually understand what’s going on in more depth and fix it in a lasting, effective way. This can be hard and take a long time, but it’s efficient overall. Keep doing it and you’ll be better at thinking – it’ll save time and make you more successful in the long run. Not fixing your errors in a serious way means you keep making them, which takes up a lot of time and energy, in addition to causing failures at goals you have.

The first sentence:

> [@Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors/2202/1):
>
> It’s also important to have high standards.

I don’t know what those high standards are. I read already read ahead and I think it has to do with you doing the postmortem.

> [@Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/postmortems-help-address-causes-of-errors/2202/1):
>
> People often do a superficial postmortem investigation and then come up with some kind of explanation of the error, and then want to move on.

I think I’ve been doing superficial ones cuz I did a postmortem recently where I felt I was learning more about the problems than the actual fix to them. Like, what was the cause of the error? Can I confidently answer that? No? Ok, what is that about? It was learning more about what I didn’t know. I didn’t post it but it was when I was making a mini-project about video games.

What is “some kind of explanation of the error”? Does that talk about why the error happened? It seems like the explanation isn’t all that grounded. If the postmortem was superficial then it would be hard to find an explanation about why the error happened. It would be hard to talk about its underlying cause. You didn’t investigate enough to find the underlying cause let alone make a fix for it.

When the quote above says: “and then want to move on.” That makes things seem resolved when there’s still questions that linger. I think it would be better if you would conclude you couldn’t find answer. That shows that you can have a better investigation next time. There’s more to learn about your errors than you thought. Would it be good to assume, as a beginner, that you won’t find the cause all that easily? You should try to achieve goals you know are challenging enough to do.

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