Applied statistics /or/ How to clean the world
The noise VS signal paradox
There needs to be waste and complexity first, before someone can cut through the noise to find the signal. To get the essence, to create value out of waste, there needs to be waste initially, because it is the material of which value is eventually made.
The mistakes VS learning paradox
Similarly, there needs to be mistakes before learning from them.
The DIY VS LOD paradox
However, life is simply too short to make all the mistakes and errors yourself. It is also too short to create too much waste. Life is already incredibly complex and there is already an overload of noise that needs to be cleared up.
One can actually be thankful for all the mess. There were previous generations who did all the experiments and trials before. Now one can just clean up. There is simply value in restructuring, in curating, in simplifying.
(There is tremendous value in making mistakes yourself (skin-in-the-game related), however mostly for unique experiments that haven’t been tried – for everything that has been done before, there is little value in repeating)
What is key here is that you don’t need to be the one who comes up with waste, complexity and noise, or similarly, errors and mistakes. Someone else can. You just need to take the insights and apply them. That’s it.
This story was published on Medium.