What effect does the correct method have on the success or failure of things?

For doing the same thing, using the same method may sometimes succeed and sometimes fail; Therefore, success does not necessarily mean that the method is correct, and failure does not necessarily mean that the method is incorrect. If a subject does a thing with a good method but fails, or does a thing with a bad method but succeeds, then future generations will judge this person or this thing according to the historical view of "judging right and wrong by success or failure", which is easy to make mistakes. When the success rates of "good methods" and "bad methods" are close, future generations will be more likely to make mistakes. If the success rate of "good method" and "bad method" is low, the possibility of future generations making mistakes will increase with the improvement of the accuracy of the subject selection method. When the success rate of "good method" is not high and the success rate of "bad method" is extremely low, future generations are particularly prone to make mistakes, and the probability of making mistakes is even close to 1.

The direct cause of misjudgment is that good and bad are relative, and the "good method" is only a method with high probability of success and cannot guarantee success; The "bad method" is only a method with a small probability of success, and there is no guarantee that it will not succeed. Using a "good method" but failing, or using a "bad method" but succeeding, are essentially "small probability events". The deep-seated reason for misjudgment is that the success or failure of the subject in doing something does not depend entirely on the quality of the method, because of factors such as technology, social conditions, ideas, the strength of the parties, natural conditions and so on.

Later generations often take the attitude of being wise after the event when evaluating the method choice of the main body of the work. In all fields of social life, the historical view of "judging right and wrong by success or failure" may make future generations make wrong judgments on the quality of methods; However, in natural science, social science, engineering technology, literature and art, religion, non-competitive sports and other fields, there are opportunities to repeatedly test the judgment of good or bad methods; However, in the fields of politics, military affairs and competitive sports, due to the particularity of this field, there is no chance to repeatedly test the judgment of good or bad methods.

The real harm of the historical view of "judging right and wrong by the method of success or failure" lies in that when people choose the method of doing things, they often consciously or unconsciously take the success or failure of previous people in doing similar things as the judgment standard, so that if the predecessors failed with a good method, or succeeded with a bad method, then future generations may increase the probability of failure because of misjudgment; This kind of harm is more likely to appear in the choice of methods in historical evolution.