Why do we need feedback?

Feedback accelerates learning and is essential for controlling anything. Only by relying on them we can reach our purposes. That’s the main message of the article published on BBC website in February 2013. Here you can read the shortened version of it.

 Cybernetics is the name given to the study of feedback, and systems that use feedback, in all their forms. The term comes from the Greek word for "to steer", and inspiration for some of the early work on cybernetics sprang from automatic guiding systems developed during World War II for guns or radar antennae. Around the middle of the twentieth century cybernetics became an intellectual movement across many different disciplines.  

A key message of cybernetics is that you can't control something unless you have feedback – and that means measurement of the outcomes.  

The flip side of this dictum is the promise that with feedback, you can control anything. The human brain seems to be the arch embodiment of this cybernetic principle. With the right feedback, individuals have been known to control things as unlikely as their own heart rate, or learn to shrink and expand their pupils at will. It even seems possible to control the firing of individual brain cells.  

But enhanced feedback methods can accelerate learning about more mundane behaviours. For example, if you are learning to take basketball shots, augmented feedback in the form of "You were 3 inches off to the left" can help you learn faster and reach a higher skill level quicker.  

Thanks to feedback we develop more complex responses to the environment. Feedback allows animals like us to follow a purpose. 

Think of your everyday experiments. Let’s take the time optimisation in the morning as an example: What time do I have to get up the latest if I want to reach the bus that takes me to the gym for opening? After the first rough estimation, let’s say, I decide to get up 80 minutes earlier than the gym opens. What factors can I monitor in order to evaluate my decision? First of all I have to check if I manage to catch the bus after the morning preparations. If I can, I have to measure the time I spend with waiting and try to reduce it to minimal but at the same time I have to pay attention to the risk coming from early bus arrivals. So I have to note down the changes of the following:

- time of leaving the flat
- successfully reaching the bus (yes/no)
- time spent with waiting for the bus

(I assume that the speed of morning preparation and the time I spend on walking to the bus station is constant. However, these assumptions require further consideration.)

The answers in my notebook are the feedback that will help me find the optimal time to leave.

Later I’ll report my results.

WALK in English