- In one word: Feedback.
- In a sentence: reality gives information
awful cheapwhen you try stuff.
And it explains everything:
- The history of life...how did life get here, how did humans arrive? Trial and Error (death), usually called evolution.
- The human mind...how did it get to be how it is? Trial and Error (death), AKA Evolutionary Psychology
- The history of civilization...how did humans become prosperous? Trial and Error(bankruptcy), usually called free-market economics.
- Invention, improving stuff? Iphone 4 vs. 1? Edison's light bulb? Trial and Error, AKA Prototyping. Lean is the Trial and Error-generated mechanism for formalizing (harnessing) the prototyping process.
- Learning, and in particular, becoming expert? Trial and Error. Doing is the core of learning, and the serious learning occurs at the point of identifying errors.
What is it you want to understand about the world? The feedback system is the universal explanatory feature? The question is juist how it applies.
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4 comments:
reality gives information awful cheap when you try stuff
It isn't cheap. I.e.: evolution. Millions of mutants die waiting for the one lucky superior mutant.
Similarly, we can cheaply get information on how to turn America around by just trying out governmental forms. If progressives destroy our economy, then we know the Cathedral was a bad idea.
Point to you Leonard. Not cheap.
Of course...with America...there are an awful lot of us who see no answers at all.
10:1 says that the decline will be stopped only by the even-worse Hugo Chavez equivalent.
Or we know that unlimited government doesn't suck any less if it's called a democracy.
Note that was pretty much the conclusion I reached on the Julian Simon question earlier -- what limits the rate of advance is neither the availability of raw materials nor the creation of ideas, but the rate at which feedback can be induced and reacted to.
McGuinn,
1. I've been pushing that idea since my blog re-started. Build feedback into your feedback system, and you become as a god.
2. That was a damn good post of yours.
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