Insanity: Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results. -albert Einstein

30 September 2018

Einstein'south had a lot of witty and profound sayings, simply "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and once again and expecting a different result" is not i of them. And however, these words had often been misattributed to him. It is non exactly clear who came up with the phrase, only it is a fact that a lot of people got convinced that originated behind the famous mustache of Einstein.

He was one of the giants of science in the 20th century, (Einstein, non the 'stache) which means that the phrase has the audio, the ring of something smart. It sounds like something a physics genius might say. The phrase sounds sciencey.

And it had me believing it. Einstein, Meinstein or whoever said information technology, I subscribed to it. Until my work experience proved it otherwise.

Back when I worked for Twitter, I was running A/B tests. A properly conducted A/B test is one of the closest things you become to science when building a product. Information technology lets yous sift the racket and luck out so yous tin arrive at a piece of noesis. If I change the product from A to B, I will get X% of my customers better by Y% with statistical significance. That'south the type of sentence you lot tin can confidently claim and bet a lot of money on after an A/B test.

And yet, A/B tests lack one crucial property of scientific discipline. They are non reproducible. If you run an A/B exam today, and run the same A/B test six months from at present, you might get a different result. Allowing for a unlike result is emphatically non insanity. I become it, running the same experiment is probable to result in the same outcome. But likely ain't sure.

I saw the same experiment get run twice, the two runs being about a yr autonomously. The results were different. The first fourth dimension around, the experiment didn't show any improvement. And yet, half a year later, it did work. The circumstances had inverse. What we were trying to test worked meliorate, even though the idea was the same. Ane year subsequently, it showed positive improvement. It was green.

Same idea. Dissimilar result. This is counterintuitive AF. It was surprising after the fact, but fifty-fifty harder to imagine a priori.

Considering we tend to overgeneralize from limited experiences and discard ideas that failed once before. In one case an idea has been tried unsuccessfully, nosotros tend to give information technology a black stamp in the passport and ban it from entering our heads again. We desire cognition that we tin trust, and it sometimes takes a unmarried foul for usa to discredit an idea. One strike. Out.

Unscientific. Considering science is all about reproducibility. The definition of science is doing the same thing over and over and knowing that you'll get the aforementioned result. Yous can prove scientifically that if you drop an apple tree, in the absenteeism of interference from other forces, it will fall down. It would be incredibly stupid and yes… insane to believe that the apple may not fall down. It will be non-scientific, which ways that it is not the way the universe we live in works.

In our universe, gravity force ever tries to pull objects down. And science is the mode of determining the rules of the universe. Only there are limits to scientific discipline even in a deterministic system.

For example, accept magnets. It is reasonable to expect that the North Pole of a compass will always be pointing at the North Pole of the Earth. Information technology has e'er been pointing the same way. People have used it to navigate around the globe, for centuries, even millennia. And nevertheless, it might flip effectually. It hasn't always been that way. The magnetic field of World has reversed its direction multiple times, at random intervals

The magnetic reversal of the poles is due to existence function of a cluttered dynamic system. Molten metals and whatnot are spinning and twirling and splashing and splashing inside the Earth'due south core. If they spin more often than not in circles, their electric charge generates a powerful magnetic field. Information technology'southward like a cup of java spinning after calculation milk or sugar, merely information technology is possible to spin it the other style rather quickly by changing the management in which we stir it with a spoon.

In a chaotic system like that, the further you go out in the future, the lower your ability to predict what would happen. And the grab is that anything could happen. When dealing with cluttered systems, like the weather or politics, "expecting the unexpected" is not insanity. It's common sense for the long run.

And we are oft office of the systems. We suit, learn new skills, and forget things such equally what we had for lunch yesterday. Which means that if we've tried to do something before, and it didn't work, but nosotros've changed and nosotros are trying information technology again… well, we might not be trying exactly the same idea. Not in the scientific sense of it being the same. Of course, if there are a lot of similarities, then we might have a stiff prior expectation that the consequence will be the same. Just at that place always are pocket-size differences, and often they matter a lot.

"Attempt harder" is a phrase many of u.s.a. have heard, whether from a passenger vehicle or a boss or a parent. The idea is that the reason for non succeeding before is our level of try. Some tasks require a lot of strength, concentration and force us to muster our entire self. To "try harder."

And sometimes the change in the cluttered system is imperceptible to the states. We might be in a negotiation and keep on request our counterpart to agree on something. They might be using our persistence to evaluate how much we care about the topic, and the amount nosotros care might exist a factor in them deciding whether to acquiesce to our demands, and past persisting on a topic, we might exist more convincing. Such persistence just works sometimes though, as information technology tin can exist interpreted as badgering, or bullying and could alienate the other side. Fifty-fifty if information technology gives us a win, information technology might exist a pyrrhic win, dragging us downwards in the long term.

So… what's the whole point. Was Meinstein correct to point at insanity, where others might come across persistence? I think non. I believe unless scientifically proven incorrect, we shouldn't requite up easily. To paraphrase another big physicist, David Deutsch "Everything that'south not forbidden by the laws of physics is possible."

To overgeneralize failure is a logical fallacy. To tell ourselves stories, claiming that things are impossible. These stories are lies.

And we can stop lying to ourselves.

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Source: https://dimitarsimeonov.com/2018/09/30/doing-the-same-thing-and-expecting-different-result

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