Innovation Without Feedback Is Drift

The ancient world respected tradition, and was wary of most kinds of change. In contrast, our modern world looks down on tradition, and celebrates most change as innovation. And this, alas, will be our downfall. Hopefully some civ after ours will learn this key lesson: you should only innovate as fast as you get feedback on the changes that you try.With most technology and business practices, we can see most of their key consequences pretty locally and pretty fast. So we can get a lot of data fast, and can reject most of them as bad ideas, but accumulate the rare winners. In contrast, many changes in norms, morals, and other key parameters that distinguish our game-theoretic equilibria set the health of entire cultures, health that may not be revealed for decades or centuries. It thus makes far more sense to be accepting and even eager for innovations in the former areas, compared to the latter areas. Alas, our modern burst of enthusiasm for innovation has not made this key…