Assumptions, Approximations and Errors

We live in a world of assumptions and whatever we do is somehow an approximation like everything we learn, observe, create, every action etc.., are all assumptions or literally said to be some justifications that we give for an unproven happening in future, past or present. While we take measurement of any object we just round off the values to make a quick and easy calculation, the thinking may be somewhat weird but even a very polished surface can have miniature craters and some differences in the lengths or heights that shall make differences in the final output. Even a very little would make a huge difference while making critical calculations where precision cannot be achieved, this makes the errors and collapses the sequence of events where the calculations are used and manipulated to get a final result. We may think that’s not going to affect anything, but actually it does.

This not only applies for the mathematical and scientific calculations, even our day to day life is based on assumptions. With our emotions, actions, thinking, choices we do everything with some expectations, but only sometimes we meet those expectations but always and often the reality changes. We believe that by making some mentally calculated actions with the help of emotions and thinking we do something to change the sequence of events, so it may result in the way we assumed, but it does not happen that way. This is not a very serious problem when considered for smaller issues, but these accuracy matters while considering bigger issues. Also the simplest errors, a miscalculation leads to very critical and dangerous results, like the world wars which incurred huge destruction were due the decisions made by some. 

This can be observed from our history, there has been always a better theory or work being done or presented by various scientists and it has always shown that the assumptions that were made earlier are wrong. The simple example is that the earth was considered to be flat earlier by Greeks and then it was Pythagoras who first proposed that the earth is round, but it is not true now because the recent development in space science have calculated that the earth is in the shape of spheroid, oblate spheroid. Still it is not the exact shape of the earth, in fact the shape of the earth changes every time due to the weather and climatic changes, the sea waves, manmade activities and natural calamities. So, the shape is actually irregular and changing, but just as an approximation it is considered that the shape of earth is oblate spheroid (Click here to know more). This is not causing problem to anyone (this too is an assumption) and so we have other things to bother about, but actually this can be a major reason behind several disasters or events that are something dangerous for us which happens mainly due to the shape and motion of the earth around sun (Click here to know more). We also do some contribution for this by increasing the earth’s temperature more than it must be (Global Warming) which in turn causes climatic changes, and this contributes to the change in shape of earth.

The point to be considered here is these assumptions and approximations are to be carefully done when the results are dealing with life/lives. There are some ridiculous and small mistakes that have taken several lives. We can observe this from this article “6 Small Math Errors That Caused Huge Disasters” (Click here) in which:

• An Airliner crashes due to Square Windows in it.
• Fighter jets crashed because of 0 degree angle of the runway.
• A huge walkway collapses due to an inconsequential design change in nut and rod.
• Hundreds die due to nightclub door hinges.
• The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses because it was too solid and didn’t have holes.
• The Titanic sank because the center propeller wouldn’t reverse.

These things become very serious as the results are devastating, but the reasons are funnier and no one could have guessed this before the disasters had happened. Errors are considered to be big when it causes huge loss in terms of money and it can be observed in the history and mostly in space research:

• The small typo error that destroyed the NASA rocket and causing a loss of $80 million (Click here).
• The crash of NASA’s genesis probe caused over $260 million loss. 
• The explosion of space shuttle challenger causing $5.5 billion loss.
• The Y2K FIASCO (Millennium Bug) causing $308 billion loss.
• The Mars climate orbiter lost causing $125 million loss.
• Hubble’s blurred vision issue causing $1.5 billion loss to rectify it.
• Ariane 5 rocket self-destruct causing $370-500 million loss.

These data are taken from an article “SIX TINY SCIENTIFIC MISTAKES THAT CREATED HUGE DISASTERS” (Click here)

Still there are several things happening till now because of small errors and in some cases it takes more time, huge efforts to identify and correct them. 

But we cannot just say that assumptions, approximations and the small errors could just only cause loss and disasters. It can also work in another way by preventing an accident or disaster, only in rare cases and not always. This is what affects the sequence of events and has somehow a reason for today’s presence. Maybe if these errors had been carefully handled and rectified, the disasters would not have happened and today would not be in the way it is. The sequence of events in the time would have changed altering the present now. Thanks for the mankind who has not made such errors in something more serious like nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, drones, genetic engineering, HAARP technology and few more things which may sound ridiculous but not sure whether there are any serious researches going on those things (like communication with aliens, super-human research).

Recently there was news which came with a title, “Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language” (Click here). It happened at Facebook where an AI system was being developed and two bots negotiated in a chat with each other, at some instances they were using language that did deviate from standard correct English. But Facebook has said that it was a trial and error experiment where bots/agents gradually improved in their performance and also said it was the media that hyped the topic like something threatening (Click here). Still no one knows exactly what has happened but in the near or distant future there may be huge improvements in AI and if errors would be made by humans, the results may go either way as good, bad or even worse. Let’s get ready for the future. 

If interested about Artificial Intelligence, don’t miss to read my previous article about “Future Predicting AI” (Click here)

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