Positive Accident
Unexpected results can become useful discoveries when people notice and investigate them. Taleb connects this idea to trial and error, the story of Apelles the Painter, and a willingness to tolerate small failures.
THE IDEA
THE IDEA OF POSITIVE ACCIDENT
Recall the empirics, those members of the Greek school of empirical medicine. They considered that you should be open-minded in your medical diagnoses to let luck play a role. By luck, a patient might be cured, say, by eating some food that accidentally turns out to be the cure for his disease, so that the treatment can then be used on subsequent patients. The positive accident (like hypertension medicine producing side benefits that led to Viagra) was the empirics’ central method of medical discovery.
This same point can be generalized to life: maximize the serendipity around you.
Sextus Empiricus retold the story of Apelles the Painter, who, while doing a portrait of a horse, was attempting to depict the foam from the horse’s mouth. After trying very hard and making a mess, he gave up and, in irritation, took the sponge he used for cleaning his brush and threw it at the picture. Where the sponge hit, it left a perfect representation of the foam.
Trial and error means trying a lot. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins brilliantly illustrates this notion of the world without grand design, moving by small incremental random changes. Note a slight disagreement on my part that does not change the story by much: the world, rather, moves by large incremental random changes.
Indeed, we have psychological and intellectual difficulties with trial and error, and with accepting that series of small failures are necessary in life. My colleague Mark Spitznagel understood that we humans have a mental hang-up about failures: “You need to love to lose” was his motto. In fact, the reason I felt immediately at home in America is precisely because American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma and embarrassment. America’s specialty is to take these small risks for the rest of the world, which explains this country’s disproportionate share in innovations. Once established, an idea or a product is later “perfected” over there.
When to use it
In product development, encourage experimentation and accept small failures to discover unexpected features.
In personal career, take on diverse projects to increase chances of accidental discoveries.
In scientific research, be open to unexpected results and follow them up.
In medicine, pay attention to side effects that might lead to new treatments.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Viagra Discovery
Taleb cites the unexpected effects of a drug investigated for hypertension as an example of a discovery that led to Viagra.
Apelles the Painter
In the story retold by Sextus Empiricus, Apelles throws a sponge at a painting in frustration. Its mark supplies the horse’s foam that he had been unable to paint deliberately.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a time when a mistake led to an unexpected positive outcome. How can you create conditions for such accidents?
What risks are you avoiding that might contain serendipitous opportunities?
How can you cultivate a tolerance for failure to increase serendipity in your life?
References
- The Blind Watchmaker — Richard Dawkins (1986)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable With a new section On Robustness and Fragility (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)