Is it better to be brilliant and make few errors or to make many errors that are constantly being corrected? Experience from many different complex systems suggests that the latter strategy is superior. Consider the following examples.
In biology, Charles Darwin explained how the direct action and design of an omnipotent being is not necessary to account for the present state of varied and complex species. The key in evolutionary biology lies in the action of a robust error correction process. There is natural variability within a species causing modest changes generation to generation. Most changes reduce survivability and reproductive success and thus are, by such criteria, "mistakes." The accumulation of rare positive changes through the ruthless action of natural selection inexorably leads to successful adaptations.
In economics, the dominant evidence of the last century is that complex economies are not successful when controlled by a rigid top-down command structure. In free entrepreneurial economies many small companies are started. Some small number of these are successful and prosper. The natural selection of the market rewards those companies that best meet consumer demands. Command economies lack the rigid error correction mechanism to insure that resources are not squandered endlessly in ill-conceived enterprises. It is not that people from free economies are smarter than those from command economies. Rather, the economic selection process sorts the successes from the failures, thus propagating successes at a faster rate.
In governance much the same wisdom applies. In the 19th century, Alex De Tocqueville tried to explain to fellow Europeans how a society run by the undereducated masses could possibly function in comparison to European countries governed by an educated and morally superior elite. The reason, De Tocqueville explained, was in the error-correction process. It was not necessarily true that democracies produce laws that are any wiser than laws from the nobility. However, in democracies when laws are ineffective or have unintended consequences, legislators can easily amend and modify laws. A dissatisfied populace enforces the modifications through the vote. In the European countries of the era, challenging an unwise law was an implied criticism of the wisdom and even the legitimacy of the controlling authorities. Hence, errors were enshrined rather than corrected.
In evolutionary biology, in economics, and in governance it appears that genius can be replaced by mass mediocrity enable by a robust error-correction process. It seems that this bit of wisdom is replacing the old conventional wisdom of software development for complex systems.
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