I don't fully understand the relation between the difficulty of the work, the luck involved, and upside vs downside. I don't even know what you mean by the "downside", is that the downside of making the mistake, or the downside of not making the mistake?

I'm saying the downside of making the mistake (for her) might be larger than the upside of making the mistake. I don't think that's obviously wrong.

But my real main point is that speculation of this kind (in either direction) isn't very productive.

You're right that there is an opportunity cost here, and that it may be underestimated by most people, but you just can't give people much imaginary credit for things they might have done.

That was sort of my point, we shouldn't be giving imaginary credit to various people like throwaway285524 was doing. Like I said, I'm not very happy speculating in either direction.