I think that Bob’s tomato sauce is likely to stink, because it would take too long to iterate if he does things his way. However, it is certainly possible for his sauce to be great, ie. if he stumbles across a good recipe.
This is critical: you speak of Bob stumbling—but to the contrary, Bob’s approach allows him to make directed, purposeful movements in recipe-space. Bob’s approach starts out more slowly than Alice’s, but then it accelerates in the rate at which it allows Bob to gain knowledge of the possibilities, because Bob is able to gain (a much deeper) understanding of why recipes work the way that they do.
Here we come to my first point: aggregation of knowledge, being the foundation upon which civilization is built, comes into play here too: Bob need not do all his systematic exploration from scratch, as others have done much of it before him; and what of such Bob does, he can document, and then others who come after him benefit.
So then, even if Bob happened to have great tomato sauce, Alice would demonstrate to him that he was just lucky
And Bob would say: No, Alice, you do me an injustice by attributing my success to luck; I made my great tomato sauce the way that I did because I knew exactly what I was doing.
(And the rest of your comment, I addressed above.)
Good points about directed movements and standing on others’ shoulders. After hearing you articulate your thoughts futher, I’m definitely questioning whether cooking was a good example to use.
This is critical: you speak of Bob stumbling—but to the contrary, Bob’s approach allows him to make directed, purposeful movements in recipe-space. Bob’s approach starts out more slowly than Alice’s, but then it accelerates in the rate at which it allows Bob to gain knowledge of the possibilities, because Bob is able to gain (a much deeper) understanding of why recipes work the way that they do.
Here we come to my first point: aggregation of knowledge, being the foundation upon which civilization is built, comes into play here too: Bob need not do all his systematic exploration from scratch, as others have done much of it before him; and what of such Bob does, he can document, and then others who come after him benefit.
And Bob would say: No, Alice, you do me an injustice by attributing my success to luck; I made my great tomato sauce the way that I did because I knew exactly what I was doing.
(And the rest of your comment, I addressed above.)
Good points about directed movements and standing on others’ shoulders. After hearing you articulate your thoughts futher, I’m definitely questioning whether cooking was a good example to use.
cough quality of ingredients cough :)