Critical mass is the key to success

My dad said two things over his entire lifetime that were of lasting value to me.

The first: "A penny saved is better than a penny earned — because you don't have to work to save a penny."

Excellent.

The second: "If you throw enough garbage against the wall some of it will stick."

Actually, he used a four–letter synonym for the word "garbage" but this is the G-Rated version.

Anyway, the second has proved to be a far deeper insight than I had any reason to believe when I first heard it.

Because what I like to call the "critical mass" effect is, I believe, a key component of success.

If you send enough spam email, even the tiniest number of people buying whatever it's selling multiplies to a huge amount of money.

If you ask enough people to do something almost all will refuse but every now and then, for whatever reason, someone will say yes.

The key is persistence.



You simply have to be willing to spend almost limitless amounts of time and effort ringing up numbers for the denominator: all it takes is one to succeed if you ask the right question.

I'm reminded of Albert Szent–Georgyi's advice to young scientists looking for a research problem: "If you're going to go fishing, use a big hook."

In many cases it takes no more effort to get a big thing right than a little one, so why not think big?

This concept, of endless attempts that end in failure almost universally, is somewhat akin to that of emergent phenomena, the tendency of systems to organize and develop entirely new forms and functions once a certain scale is reached.

Lenin's observation that "Quantity has its own quality" wasn't meant to describe happenings on an atomic or microscopic scale; rather, he was referring to the power that armies afford over individuals.

A cell here and a cell there don't amount to much; put enough of them in close proximity, though, and you may get life.

So do the scientists of AI reason: if enough computing power is brought to bear, consciousness will emerge.



So if life and consciousness are emergent phenomena, is it any surprise that everything that results from them echoes their own origins?