Only if you have a good sense of how things should taste and intuition for how what you put in affected it.

And how it should taste at this stage of the process. It needs experience to try some dough and extrapolate from it how the cake/bread/... will taste after baking it. Same with many sauces, for example. Things change when mixed with pasta, potatoes, veggies, meat. A sauce is much stronger without them. If you taste it and are inexperienced you may think "just right" and the dish will end up terribly bland.

Right, so you correct that for next time? It's an iterative process, and like any skill -- it takes time.

Don't overthink. If it tastes good to you, fantastic. Only after that, if you want it, should you spend time trying to figure out how to make it taste like it is "supposed" to taste.

These things are not innate, they are learnt. You are essentially saying you can only learn to cook if you already know how to cook. Obviously this is not true otherwise no one would ever learn to cook.

To develop the intuition for flavour and quantities you have to be willing to ruin your food. Add too much salt and you'll find out pretty quick. You'll also learn pretty quickly that the "right" amount is somewhere between too little and too much.

Not necessarily true. Taste is super subjective, only you can decide whether you think something tastes good.

And of course, it takes a long time to taste something and realize exactly what it misses or what causes it to taste good, but as long as you are able to test out different recipes you'll eventually end up with quite a few dishes that taste great.

The point was plateauing, not that what you make doesn't taste great to you. Making stuff that tastes great to an average person isn't hard, you'll reach there really quickly, it is improving after that point that is hard.

Yes, my wife can do this. I think most people could learn the technical skills, but my wife can taste something and decide on exactly the right thing to add.

Exactly, it doesn't get much clearer than this whether you failed or succeeded!

@silvestrov: just try easy recipes and buy good and fresh ingredients, and continue with harder recipes once you get the hang of it.