Lehrer writes (page 51):

Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, has spent decades demonstrating that one of the crucial ingredients of successful education is the ability to learn from mistakes.

Lehrer writes (page 54):

When an expert evaluates a situation, he doesn't systematically compare all the available options or consciously analyze the relevant information. ... Instead, the expert naturally depends on the emotions generated by his dopamine neurons. His prediction errors have been translated into useful knowledge, which allows him to tap into a set of accurate feelings he can't begin to explain.

On the second day of the Big Spring US Nationals, I was off again a half hour after the launch window opened, in between Chris Zimmerman (the first one to launch) and Derrick Turner. With three tugs we were all pulled to the same spot so we got together right away. This was a good crew to hang out with.

There were clouds to the east of the airfield, and I hung with Derrick Turner who was finding good lift so things were good. The winds were 15 mph out of the south and we had a similar task to the day before.

I stuck with Derrick and we worked together taking the start at four minutes after the window opened. Again on this day your time started when you crossed the 15 km start cylinder edge. Chris was a bit below us and not helping much. At this point I felt it was a good idea to head out in front with Derrick, with lots of clouds ahead. I knew that there would be pilots behind us trying to catch up. I could hear my team mates on the radio.

We (the US National team members) were trying to fly together but I was out in front on the first day and was now out in front again, so I wasn't getting any help from my team mates. This is unfortunate, and if I had been more patient on launch I could have been with them instead of with Chris and Derrick. I could have been in radio contact with them and been next to them. It would have been nice to be in radio contact with Derrick.

For the first hour Derrick and I flew together helping each other pushing to the left (southwest) side of the course line getting under the clouds. I was drawn to the clouds, what I was not noting as well as I should, and what caused trouble, was that I was not aware, on an emotional level that the wind was out of the southeast, right down the course line. We were seven kilometers left of the course line, just to get under the clouds, but we really didn't need to stay this far off the course line. It's a lot faster if you actually fly on the course line.

Nine kilometers south of Lamesa I headed out first and lost track of Derrick. He headed a little more to the north than I did. We were heading for a thick dark cloud street that headed off to the north northwest. When we got to it we both climbed up under it to cloud base, but he was 1.4 km to my north and didn't see him.

At this point I was emotionally torn between going under the really nice cloud street, that appeared to me to be going downwind back toward the course line, or to go parallel to the course line but south of it, as I had been doing. I still thought that the wind was out of the south like the day before so I wanted to stay south of the course line.

Derrick ran up the cloud street and I had to run to the clouds further off the course line. He got much closer to the course line and had much better lift under the cloud street. This put him much closer to the turnpoint and much higher than me. This got him to goal twenty minutes before I got there.