What is going on in our mind when we design, review, test? Could it be like evolution - the process that has designed all living things? A property of evolution that is hard to grasp is that it has no goal, not even survival. And still, knowledge is accumulated over time in the species that do survive. New ideas on how to be and act is created by random mutations, which are criticised by reality - including other species. But this doesn't seem to be the way we design things. We don't build random things and keep the ones that are useful, do we? That would take a lot of time. We design and build products much faster than that. And we do it on purpose to reach a goal, to satisfy a need. Or could it be that we are mistaken about what is really going on and that design is exactly like evolution? That the things we have are just random creations that could have been completely different. That the things that are useful to us are preserved until they no longer are and then forgotten. That designs mutate and are then outcompeted by improved versions of themselves. Take a look at testing for example. There is something about our need to test our creations that resembles evolution. We are never 100% sure that the things we design will work in reality. It is true that we don't go ahead and build any random thing, but still.
I
have noticed that to be able to program a computer at all, you need to
have a special ability. You need to be able to simulate in your head the
effect of a code statement running on the computer. To do this you
first need to be able to load the rules of interpretation the computer
follows into your head. That we have this ability implies that we are
universal simulators. And this, I think, is also the key to understand
how we design things in general. It means that we don't have to build
everything that we come to think of to see if they will work. We can
simulate them in our head instead and quickly reject things that doesn't
work. The same principle applies to any action we could choose to take.
The effects of the action can be simulated ahead of time. This means
creativity can be purely random at its core just like mutations are. We
quickly simulate the ideas that flow from this process and reject the
ones that fails. Some ideas we act on and a few end up as products.
But still, we are pursuing goals that can be quite far away from where we start. We know ahead of time where we want to end up. This doesn't seem very random, and still it probably is. Where did the goal come from in the first place? Random creativity. And we did simulate it and we have seen that the goal is worth pursuing. The gap from here to a goal far away has to be filled with intermediate goals, random as well, and the simulation tells us which are steps in the right direction. This process of breakdown continues until the goals are trivial for us to achieve.
The
simulation is not perfect and we always risk going down paths that
doesn't lead where we want when we try our ideas in reality, or when
later stages of the simulation fails to connect an intermediate goal to
either the beginning or the end. At that moment we backtrack and wait
for new random ideas to try out. It is good to not put unnecessary
constraints on the end goal because you don't know which turns the
random road to the goal will take. Be open minded and try to use
whatever your creativity comes up with, maybe even adjust the goal
itself to better fit the ideas that become available. If all you have is
a hammer...
If we take the simulation idea further it means our minds are collectively running a set of virtual realities - simulations of physical reality. An environment where memes (in the original, broader sense) can replicate, evolve and influence our thinking. Despite being abstract, memes can affect the real world through us humans because how we act in the real world are influenced by abstractions in the virtual world. Memes are ideas that spread through various forms of communication between people. Each individual uses creativity and simulation to turn the incoming message into a personal idea that in turn has the power to change the simulation. All ideas are not memes, only the ones that can spread between minds are.
If creativity is an unconscious process that we are born with, i.e. genetic knowledge, is it possible for us to improve it or are we stuck with what we got? If we can figure out which methods are used by creativity, e.g. recombination of already existing ideas, we could simulate these methods and thereby control our own creative process, even when the defective genes of an individual lack knowledge of that particular method. We are, after all, universal simulators.
To wrap things up. We have found design to be simulated tests of random ideas produced by our creativity. Review is just another person using the same mechanisms, and the transfer of ideas between humans also requires creativity and simulation at the receiving end. The purpose of real tests are to verify that we didn't make mistakes in the simulation and make sure the thing we have built is fit for its purpose. We will never be completely sure though, because the tests are also designed with the same process and can themselves have errors. Still, the rational thing to do is to use a product that has passed all tests, simulated or real.
If you have gotten this far I should tell you that these are not my own ideas. If you want to learn more make sure to check out David Deutsch, Donald Campbell, Karl Popper and the blogs and podcasts from Bruce Nielson (The Four Strands, The Theory of Anything), Brett Hall (ToKCast), Christofer Lövgren (Do Explain).
