“𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐮𝐩 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝.” Those words were spoken by Brian Russell in a post-disaster reflection. He was one of five engineers who tried to stop the Challenger space shuttle launch 40 years ago. I was a teenager at the time. Revisiting the case through this linked article brought it back into focus for me.

I stumbled across a little social experiment on Facebook the other day. The caption was: “Help me choose the most suitable tiles.” See image below. Naturally, I clicked in - partly curious, partly wanting my preferred tile validated (No. 1). But here’s what stopped me: out of 65 comments, there was no clear loser. Every tile had its fans. Some people were bold and decisive. Others were completely unsure. A few went totally off-script: “None of them—change the wall colour.”