I try to keep this philosophy in mind. Ed Catmull from Pixar has a lot to say on it that reflects your thoughts.
One thing I like to do is watch videos of AI trained to play video games. At a late stage, they are amazing, but the early stage training sets are laughably bad and filled with 'failures'. The key is to realize that the awesome stuff would never have occurred without learning from those early mistakes.
That's a good comparison. It brings to mind the image of a moving line that goes to the wrong side of the screen to deflect the pong ball. Lol. :)
Of relevance.