Similar Successes

Similar successes is CF's strategy for unbounded progress: do activities similar to past successes, generalising successful patterns.

The principle

• Find something that worked. A specific activity with good outcomes.
• Identify the pattern. What made it work?
• Do similar activities. Same pattern, new context.
• Generalise the pattern. Use it for bigger and bigger problems.

Why this works

• Past success is a non-refuted IGC. The pattern is at least partly right.
• Similar activities let you test the pattern. Does it generalise?
• error-correction is incremental. Each iteration refines the pattern.
• Progress compounds. Better patterns enable bigger successes.

How to apply

1. List recent successes. What worked recently?
2. Identify the pattern. What do they have in common?
3. Pick a similar activity. Close in domain, slightly different.
4. Run it. See if the pattern holds.
5. Update the pattern. Refine based on outcomes.

Anti-patterns

• Doing similar failures. Just because something failed doesn't mean a similar thing will.
• Too-similar activities. No new information.
• Too-different activities. Pattern doesn't transfer.
• No reflection. Just doing things isn't enough.

Connection to practice

Practice is similar-successes at a smaller scale:

• Sub-skill practice. Drill a pattern.
• Skill chaining. Combine patterns.

Connection to CF philosophy

CF treats similar successes as the engine of unbounded progress — not a guarantee of progress, but a strategy for finding what works.

"To Make Unbounded Progress, Do Similar Activities to Past Successes" is a CF essay title. — criticalfallibilism.com