Trial & Error

Let me start this article by disclosing you one thing. I am an output of trial and error. Let me also disclose one more thing. I am not the only one. You too are. Is it too much to digest? Ok. Let's hold on for a moment. 

Few days back, I was talking to one of my colleague in office about a bug in one of our software. He was dam sure that this bug was caused due to this issue. So we tried to fix that issue but the bug was still there.  

The reason I shared this incident is because many of us including me suffer from this disease called 'God Complex'. Now the symptoms of this disease is very simple: No matter how complex the problem, we think that we have the solution. In the above incident, my colleague thought he had the answer. Whereas this bug could have been caused by many other reasons. Instead of debugging through various ways, he insisted on trying this way only. The end result the bug was still there. Ultimately, we had to try on different set of ideas to fix this bug. In short, what we did was actually trial and error. 

God complex can be found every where. We find it among our doctors, engineers, scientist, politicians to name a few. We think that we know the solutions, though actually we know only a part of the solution. It may work. It may not work.

Many times, when we are in relationships, we are so sure that this is the girl/boy that we are going to marry. Now how many of these relationships turn into marriage? Perhaps around 50%, might be even less. Infact much lesser. Relationship is the process of trial and error. I know it does not sound good. Let see what happens in relationships.  Boy likes a girl and the girl likes the boy. They talk and try to know each other. They fight, cry, console and in the process test if they fit each other. If not, they break up and move on to the next relationship. So what are we doing here, trial and error.. trial and error.. trial and error. 

In sports, trial and error is no new concept. The coach thinks of a strategy based on his analysis, the team implements it. Will it work? Sometimes yes, sometimes not. If it works its well and good. If not, he has to find new strategy and try it out again. 

We do trial and error everyday in our lives. Be it the time we go to shop to buy a new pair of shoes or be it the time when we decide to start a new company. It is everywhere. Then, why is trial and error not an obvious thing? Perhaps, I will leave it for you to find out. Let me put forward another question. Suppose we have an electoral candidate who goes around saying this:

“I want to fix the health system. I want to fix our education system. I have no idea how to do it. I have half a dozen ideas. We try them out. They will probably all fail. Then we test some other ideas out. Will find some that work. We get rid of those that don’t“ - Tim Harford on TeD

Are you going to vote this candidate?  If yes, then trail and error is an obvious thing. If no, then you know why God complex exists among us.

"Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth”

― Benjamin Wiker, The Mystery of the Periodic Table

PS: This article is an outcome of an brilliant lecture by Tim Harford, an English Economist at TeD on God Complex.