"its not what we know that counts, its ..."

In my first day of a graduate Mathematics class the professor said, "Math is NOT about what we know, but what we can find out from what we know." This was my first conscious introduction to the value of discovery versus the value of accumulation of knowledge. Taleb writes a lot about discovery in his book "Black Swan" as a beneficial outcome of uncertainty vs the calculated by-product of rational inquiry.

The problem with rational inquiry is it's limited by our nature. We tend to extrapolate linearly, it's what our mind does. We are constrained by confirmation bias so that we tend to draw conclusions from data that justifies what we already believe, and so on.

Taleb suggests most scientists and engineers "develop tools for the pleasure of developing tools, not to induce nature to reveal it's secrets." This is especially true when dealing with social implications of technology. It's the impact from application of previous inventions that transforms society more so than the intention associated with the invention itself. Sir Francis Bacon posited that the most important advances are the least predictable ones, those lying "out of the path of the imagination."

Watson invented the computer with no idea of "googling", social networks, or data mining. He actually PREDICTED there would be no need for more than a handful of computers. Penicillium was discovered by accident. Charles Townes invented the laser just to satisfy his desire to split light beams, that's all. He admitted at the end of his life he never had retinas in his mind, given the value of the laser to do surgical stitching on detached retinas is significant to society.

Then there is the story of Viagra. Pfizer was developing a drug to increase blood flow for hypertension, but research found that the rats were having erections. Thus, the beginning of ED treatment for millions of aging men. I have a friend who is a retired cardiologists. He was at the conference where this research finding was presented in the 80's. He immediately bought a great deal of Pfizer stock, which provided much of his wealth for retirement. All serendipitous events - totally unpredictable and seemingly random events.

While planning is usually helpful in 'know how' events like building a house, its "know what" situations like discovery where planning is problemnatic. The most defining principle of discovery is that we search for what we know (India) and find something we didn't know was there (America). This suggests that we should possibly spend more of our attention on awareness of unexpected events and making sense of these Black Swans than planning, which depends on extending our current knowledge via limited abilities to predict.

Of course this is foreign to our nature or we would already be practicing discovery.

Something worth pondering ......