To run a data center requires hundreds of things to be done correctly. Mistakes are made, and an assumption in people just forget.
An interesting different explanation is your memory is malleable. You forgot, but then you saw images that made it seem like you did the task correctly.
A Photo is Worth a Thousand Ways to Change Your Memory
Most of us realize that memory is fallible. We forget things all the time–car keys, passwords, whether we turned off the oven, etc. But how many of us would admit that our memory is susceptible to change from the outside? That’s different from simply forgetting–something everyone does on their own–because someone else changing our memory requires “getting in our heads” so to speak, right?
If you forget to work on one area out of many. It is possible that your correct execution of the tasks mask your error.
Participants were presented with a series of objects on a table, and for each object were asked to either perform an action or imagine performing an action (i.e. “crack the walnut”). One week later, the same participants were brought back and randomly presented with a series of photos on a computer screen, each of a completed action (i.e. a cracked walnut), either one, two or three times. Other participants were not shown any photos.
One week later, they were brought back to complete a memory test in which they were presented with action phrases (i.e. “I cracked a walnut”) and asked to answer whether they had performed the action, imagined performing it, or neither, and rate their confidence level for each answer on a scale of one to four.
The results: the more times people were exposed to a photo of a completed action, the more often they thought they’d completed the action, even though they had really only imagined doing it. Those shown a photo of a completed action once were twice as likely to erroneously think they’d completed the action than those not shown a photo at all. People shown a photo three times were almost three times as likely as those not shown a photo.
