Hindsight Bias: The 'Knew-It-All-Along' Postmortem Trap
Hindsight bias makes past failures seem obvious. In postmortems, this leads to blaming engineers for not seeing what's now clear, instead of fixing the system. The footgun is judging past decisions with present knowledge, which hides real systemic flaws.
Hindsight bias is the 'I knew it all along' feeling that makes past failures seem more predictable than they were. In postmortems, it causes teams to blame individuals for not foreseeing an outcome that is only obvious in retrospect. This is a trap because it focuses on what people *should have done* instead of understanding *why their actions made sense at the time* with limited information. The key is to analyze the system and context that led to the decision, not just the decision itself.
Read the original → Wikipedia: Hindsight bias
- #postmortem
- #sre
- #cognitive bias
- #human factors
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