The Picard Principle: It Is Possible to Commit No Mistakes and Still Lose

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2024-05-06 12:00:36

The Picard principle is the adage that “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” This principle denotes that even if you follow the best course of action available to you, you can sometimes still end up with a negative outcome, such as failure to achieve your goals.

The Picard principle is important in many areas of life, so it’s worth understanding it properly. As such, in the following article you will learn more about this principle, and see how you can use it in practice.

An example of the Picard principle is that you can submit a strong application for something like a job or a scholarship, and then get rejected because the person who assessed your application already had a preferred candidate in mind.

Another example of this principle appears in poker, where you can make the optimal play mathematically (i.e., the one that’s most likely to win) but still lose, for instance if you bet high on a strong initial hand but then lose to someone who got lucky after an initial bad hand.