Error Correction

Error correction is the process of finding and fixing mistakes, where an error means failure at a goal. CF inherits from Critical Rationalism the view that error correction, not justification, is the central issue in epistemology: what matters is less which answer you currently hold than whether the answer can be replaced when it is wrong. Knowledge is information that has survived this process.

CF’s original contribution is to treat error-correction ability as a finite resource to be managed, budgeted, and increased. This is the core of overreach: if your rate of making errors outpaces your capacity to correct them, an unsolved-problem backlog grows without bound, criticism becomes unpleasant, and you start ignoring errors. The remedy is to mostly do things that are easy for you and advance in small steps—at most about 20% harder than a prior success—so failures stay under control.

CF also distinguishes kinds of correction. Explanatory correction diagnoses why something went wrong and devises a different solution lacking that flaw; quantitative correction reduces a numerical error (e.g. averaging measurements, or rounding inside a restricted solution space). Error bars merely document error rather than removing it, so it compounds across steps.

Crucially, correction needs practice and mechanisms, not just conscious agreement: you must keep subconscious habits in sync with new conscious ideas. CF teaches spotting error-correction mechanisms in everyday scenes—tape guiding paint, a buffer absorbing variance—as a way to build reliable intuitions. Judging success from failure objectively is a prerequisite for correcting anything at all.