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Testing
2 min read · 460 words
Testing is running an action specifically to gather information about how the system or the conditions respond — distinct from running the action to produce its normal result.
The hardware was built to learn from feedback. The inhabitant who tries an approach and observes what happens gains information the inhabitant who only theorized does not. When something is uncertain, run the small version, observe the result, calibrate, and proceed. The configuration replaces extended theorizing with direct evidence, which is usually substantially more efficient.
TWO COMMON MISFIRES
Skipping the test in favor of deciding from the chair. The inhabitant predicts what will happen, commits to the prediction, and proceeds without running the operation that would have revealed whether the prediction held. Often the prediction is right. Sometimes it is wrong in ways that a small test would have caught at low cost — and the cost of being wrong without testing can be considerably larger than the test would have been.
Testing endlessly without committing. The inhabitant runs continuous small tests without ever moving to the actual operation. The configuration looks productive. It produces almost nothing. Tests are inputs to decisions, not substitutes for them.
DESIGNING THE SMALLEST USEFUL TEST
Not the comprehensive trial. The smallest version that produces useful data.
The inhabitant uncertain whether an audience will respond to a particular kind of content can produce one piece and watch. The inhabitant uncertain about a major life direction can spend a weekend in the territory before committing. The inhabitant uncertain about a relationship configuration can have one explicit conversation about it. The smaller test, run sooner, often saves the inhabitant from much longer theorizing about an answer that was available within hours.
TESTING THE SELF
Testing operates on the inhabitant’s own system as well.
How the body responds to a new sleep schedule. How the mind responds to a different work configuration. How the emotional system responds to a new approach to a recurring situation. The results are data the inhabitant can use to calibrate. The inhabitant who never runs these tests is operating from old models of the self that may no longer match what the system is actually doing.
HOLDING RESULTS LIGHTLY
A single test is one data point, not a verdict.
Sometimes a test produces a result the inhabitant should overrule based on broader considerations. Sometimes the conditions of the test were unusual and the result will not generalize. Sometimes the right reading is to run the test again and see whether the result repeats.
Treating one test as final is misusing the operation. Treating many converging tests as evidence is using it well.
Run the test. Observe what comes back. The information is almost always more useful than the prediction.