hindsight
noun

- the ability to understand, after something has happened, why or how it was done and how it might have been done better

Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

It is often said that "hindsight is better than foresight" or that "hindsight is easier than foresight." Another expression is "If our foresight were as good as our hindsight, we would never make mistakes."

Finally there is the saying "hindsight is always 20:20" which can be used to criticise someone who arrogantly claims perfect understanding of an event (but only by virtue of having information that was not available before). The 20:20 refers to the medical term for perfect vision.

A similar US idiom is "Monday morning quarterback" from American football when professional teams play on Sundays during the fall. The quarterback is the on-field leader who makes most of the playing decisions.

The Monday morning quarterback is a person who on Monday morning, after the game is already over, says they know how the game "could" have been won. The expression is therefore used in a figurative sense to describe someone who has all the right answers when it is already too late.

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Hindsight Bias

"A phenomenon in which we revise probabilities after the fact or exaggerate the extent to which past events could have been predicted beforehand. We’re guilty of hindsight bias when we talk about the weather (there’s only a 20% chance of rain, but we say it’s going to rain and it does, and suddenly we have better forecasting ability than the experts). Hindsight bias happens at sporting events, in court rooms, in medical decisions, and in business."

Adapted from "How hindsight bias skews* your judgement", Alex Hannaford

*skew = verzerren, verdrehen

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Practice OWAD in a conversation:

"In HINDSIGHT, we should never have invested in that project."