yeah I get the same vibes from the book "psychology of computer programming", and one of the things that I liked in this book (and for the most part, missed in actual employment) was the confidence you get when you can run your code by other folks, you know, code review type things. I was also quite surprised by the bandwidth that pair programming brought to the table, two pairs of eyes on a screen with conversations is quite the different experience than one siloed guy off in a cubicle.

Mistakes are a cost of doing business with engineering, even the kinda sorta engineering programming looks like. An environment that helps to prevent mistakes from making it through testing and review should be the focus, but I guess there is value in identifying an individual as being especially mistake prone.