- 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.
Almost all new stuff sucks, but some new stuff is tremendously valuable. And we can't tell the difference up front. Makes for an...interesting life.
It's fairly obvious
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Yes, I'd say that's true.
The result is that the tradeoff, between creating more new stuff (97% of which will be crap) and selecting more effectively from the crap we're already dealing with, is made under conditions in which intuition can be very misleading.
You can benefit for a long time by picking carefully through the crap, but eventually you'll run out. That could produce some very long-wave cycles.
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.)
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