What makes Ford's observation sharp is that he's not celebrating failure or urging recklessness—he's drawing a hard line between two entirely different categories of human experience. A mistake that teaches you something has been converted into knowledge; one that teaches you nothing is simply waste, a squandered moment. When a baker burns a batch of bread and adjusts her oven temperature for next time, she's transformed a failure into expertise. But if she burns the same batch again under identical conditions, she hasn't made a second mistake—she's made the same mistake twice, and that repetition is where Ford's real sting lies.