“You have to give yourself the freedom to back away from something when you make a mistake,” Carmack said. “If you pretend you’re infallible and bully ahead on something, even when there are many danger signs that it’s not the right thing, well, that’s a sure way to leave a crater in the ground. You want to always be reevaluating things and say, Okay, it sounded like a good idea but it doesn’t seem to be working out very well and we have this other avenue which is looking like it’s working out better—let’s just do that.”