Painterly blue and white teacup with gold cracks beside a magnifying glass on dark teal cloth.

Original artwork, not a still

Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Real expertise, in this view, isn't about getting things right from the start. It comes from working through failure after failure inside one specific area until the errors run out. Competence, in other words, is really just accumulated experience with going wrong.

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