Agile development and fast failing paradox

In my post "when your money is on the line" I took a hard stance on people adventuring to overpromise on goals. Hard to argue or engage if you want to foster innovation or have a innovative working environment. If you are familiar with the normal psyche of the modern being, people are more apprehensive of losing money than going through other unpleasant experiences, so my advice with "money on the line" can lead to a cautious and timid teamwork.

Failing-fast and learning from it seems to have a second life in the media. Short cycles, constant monitoring of the results and adapting as you run gets more thumbs up and is preferred today - or agile development.

My question is if not somehow "failing-fast" is a continuation of "quick reward hunting" that the society is promoting? What do you learn from failing fast (and quick thinking) that changes you for finding success? Is the time between failures enough to adjust your inner metric to market reality?

Sometimes I have the feeling the adjustments are subjective, random and driven by intuition than real grasping of the reasons of the failure. Fast failing means there is no real pause between failures, the adjustments are incremental and in consequence the deviation is only gradual for each iteration.

I am questioning the whole concept as I prefer long pauses and longer rumination on failures.

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