The need for adaptation (Computer Science)

My father came to me as a young man and told me "You will have to make decisions the rest of your life (this would be late 1950s and early 1960s) (I was 12 in 1960). "So (he said) you need to not get all worried about all these decisions you have to make because 'no one ever has enough information to make any decision really ever'. Since this is true you have to gather whatever information you can right then and make your decisions. Later, as you get more information you might change your decisions to other decisions as needed. But, you can't stop making decisions in life or get hung up on worrying too much about these decisions. Every decision is a stepping stone to the future and any bad ones you make often can be corrected if you are adaptable enough."

This is really powerful stuff and the essence of adaptability. I have watched many people destroy their lives because they never learned this trick of just "keeping making decisions".

Life is full of thousands and thousands of decisions all the time. If you don't make them your life will be destroyed. Just try to keep making better ones as you learn more about your life!

 So, the need for adaptation is not only for computers and robotics it is also true for every one of us. Learning logic and reason and critical thinking helps us make better decisions at each and every point in our lives.

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Adaptation (computer science) - Wikipedia

The need for adaptation

A software system passes through a potentially long software engineering cycle and before delivery, requirement engineers, designers and software developers realize the components of the system. However, it is impossible to anticipate the requirements of all users, and a single best or optimal system configuration is impossible. The active involvement of users and clear understanding of user and task requirements is a challenge in the development of computer-based interactive systems for two reasons:

• the potential user groups are not known a prior, but need to be identified according to future scenarios; these groups need to be revised as the visions evolve because there may be various groups of potentially affected users.
• the visions of the aspired project are far-sighted and not close to users’ current experiences; therefore, users may not be confident and precise about their needs concerning this future system.

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Part of the problem as you see above in this description is it would be very helpful to have the Software engineering and the hardware engineering be assisted by the computer software or robotic creation since often these components can work unstopping 24 hours a day for years at a time.

In this way allowing a device to assist with it's own Self Evolution you wind up with a better device as long as it knows not to kill you by accident or on purpose.