I'm a firm believer that failures teach better than successes.

Failure is the only teacher.

"Success" is a positive outcome tied to a certain context. But change is all pervasive and what once worked, has very little chances to work again, because the context has changed. So chances to "succeed" will always be lower than chances to failure, unless context awareness is developed and trained. And this process of training is just the sum of all the failures from which knowledge is extracted.

I assume this has something to do with what you call "twice removed from reality".

By the way, there is no objective reality. For something to exist, it needs 3 inflection points: the observer, the observed and the connection between them. With every observer, "reality" changes.

Enjoyed your essay. Would love to see more of these.