“Trial and error has one overriding value people fail to
understand: it is not really random, rather, thanks to optionality, it requires
some rationality. One needs to be intelligent in recognizing the favorable
outcome and knowing what to discard.
And one needs to be rational in not making trial and error
completely random. If you are looking for your misplaced wallet in your living
room, in a trial and error mode, you exercise rationality by not looking in the
same place twice. In many pursuits, every trial, every failure provides
additional information, each more valuable than the previous one—if you know
what does not work, or where the wallet is not located. With every trial one
gets closer to something, assuming an environment in which one knows exactly
what one is looking for. We can, from the trial that fails to deliver, figure
out progressively where to go.”
-Nassim Taleb, Antifragile