notes #11: on the power of experiments

Experiments. The scientific method. Trial and error. These are terms we learn in school for academic applications. Recently, however, I am starting to see their immense importance to our daily lives.

Here’s what I figured: Experiments are the foundation of growth and learning.

An experiment is simply a way of testing to determine if something is true or not.

Not sure about whether a marketing strategy is better? Experiment. Not sure if you would like working at a particular role? Experiment. Not sure what the meaning in life is? Experiment.

There are a few ways to conduct experiments — in most cases, an experiment is conducted after research has been done. Primarily, to learn from the experiments others have done, and if required, to verify the results from their experiments.

In some cases, past experiments may even be from your past choices and actions.

In real life, conducting an experiment is not as straightforward as in the lab — you can’t always just focus on one thing and keep everything else the same.

Furthermore, human nature is susceptible to many biases that keep us from thinking clearly.

And so when evaluating our experiments, we must be extremely careful to avoid making the wrong conclusions.

If experimenting is so valuable, why do we not doing it more often?

Human nature has a tendency to believe that we are right, and to find information that confirms our beliefs. Experimenting is not only additional work, but also creates the opportunity for us to be wrong, which we dislike very much.

For experimentation to be useful, we need to conduct it with the goal of consistently trying to prove ourselves wrong. Or at the very least, reflect on how confident you are about something.

The value of personal experience

There are a number of well-known people who have said often encouraged learning from books or from others as opposed to personal experience — which is oftentimes more painful.

While books and people have much to offer, there is still significant value in experiencing something yourself — for two reasons: your situation is sometimes different and because firsthand learning is oftentimes more durable.

The best experimenters are also great observers and oftentimes a great deal of their observations, in addition to books and talking to other people, inform their experiments.

The value of history

Although lessons from the past may not often apply to the present or the future, history provides us with a much longer-term perspective, something experiments (and humans) tend to lack.

In the longer term, trends are more likely to emerge. In the short-term, there is often a lot of noise, distractions and uncertainty.

If you act for the long-term, you are more likely to make better predictions and thus take better actions.

Unfortunately, long-term thinking is often difficult and hard to execute, requiring enormous discipline.

The greatest experimenters

Here are some of the greatest experimenters I have seen in different fields of life:

• Tim Ferriss: conducts extensive experimentations on personal health and productivity

• Warren Buffett: every investment is an experiment

• Charles Darwin / Albert Einstein: made incredible scientific discoveries

• Lee Kuan Yew: strong grasp of politics and society via observation and experimentation

• Jeff Bezos: constantly experiments with new business ideas — eventually building Amazon and AWS

And that’s all for today. Keep experimenting.

Cheers, Joesurf