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Hey! Author of the piece here. I somewhat disagree, I think experiments are a great way to overcome wasted motion. Sure, only 20% will succeed. But there's a m

Hey! Author of the piece here. I somewhat disagree, I think experiments are a great way to overcome wasted motion. Sure, only 20% will succeed. But there's a major asymmetry with trying new things - you can drop the failures after trying it once, but can keep doing the successes again and again. For example, if I want to find a new hobby, I should try lots of things. 80% will be boring and I can drop it after one session, but 20% could be incredibly fun, and worth doing for the rest of my life. I flesh this point out in this post: https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/33-upside-risk

trabant00 6y ago
If you dedicate all your time to the 20% you found - at one time in some context - to be fun it means you don't have any more time for experimenting. And the world changes and your data is no longer relevant. There is no escaping the trial and error loop. If you could then science for example would go uninterrupted from one success to another. Or organizations would achieve 100% efficiency after some experimenting. You can see in history people, organizations, societies, etc that have tried to stick to what they found efficient at some point. But that led to rigidity and gradual loss of touch with the evolving reality, the exact opposite of what was desired.