I
said:
- All (+/- 3%) new stuff (things, ideas, plans, etc.) is crap.
- Those new things that aren't crap are responsible for ALL the differences between our lives and those of the dirt-eating peasantry of Egypt c. 2000BC.
- You can't tell which new stuff won't suck beforehand.
In the comments, Dr. Pat said it
better than I did:
It's worse than that. Because of the ~3% that isn't crap. 99% IS crap on the first try.
So that leaves 0.03% that isn't crap on the first try. And a very valuable 2.97% that was crap on the first try, but if you keep at it will turn out to be antibiotics or something.
Now try separating that category from the stuff that is crap, but actually works on the first try, but doesn't lead anywhere. (Raiding the next village for food. Hey, this works! Let's base our society on it.)
So the numbers on new stuff works out to:
- 90% pure crap
- 7% carefully disguised crap that looks like it might be good
- 2.97% diamonds that look like crap on 1st and usually 2nd attempts
- 0.03% obvious wins -- almost guaranteed to be pure luck + persistence.
Posts
2 comments:
To give a real life example of category 3: pharmaceutical development
It is well known that out of every million or so candidate molecules, only one ends up on the market as a medicine.
What worries me is that one stage of the winnowing process is where they get a few possibilities that work in mice, but most of these don't work in humans.
Now my worry is that if 19/20 medicines that work in mice don't work in humans, then I guess 19/20 medicines that work in humans won't work in mice.
But our current system means it has to work in mice before we can even test it in humans. So are we missing out on 19/20 effective drugs because they don't pass the mouse test?
We don't really know how bicycles stay up.
I'm personally glad they got invented anyway, though.
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