I was expecting the central idea of this post to be more similar to/an extension of Everyday Lessons from High-Dimensional Optimization. That in a high-dimensional world, a good scientist can’t afford to waste time testing implausible hypotheses. Doing so will get you the right answer eventually, but it is far too slow. In a high-dimensional world, there are just too many variables to tweak. Relevant excerpt from My Wild and Reckless Youth:
The way Traditional Rationality is designed, it would have been acceptable for me to spend thirty years on my silly idea, so long as I succeeded in falsifying it eventually, and was honest with myself about what my theory predicted, and accepted the disproof when it arrived, et cetera. This is enough to let the Ratchet of Science click forward, but it’s a little harsh on the people who waste thirty years of their lives. Traditional Rationality is a walk, not a dance. It’s designed to get you to the truth eventually, and gives you all too much time to smell the flowers along the way.
Great question. This post is completely ignoring those points, and it’s really not something which should be ignored.
In the context of this post, the question is: ok, we’re trying to hunt down sources of randomness, trying to figure out which of the billions of variables actually matter, but how do we do that? We can’t just guess and check all those variables.
I was expecting the central idea of this post to be more similar to/an extension of Everyday Lessons from High-Dimensional Optimization. That in a high-dimensional world, a good scientist can’t afford to waste time testing implausible hypotheses. Doing so will get you the right answer eventually, but it is far too slow. In a high-dimensional world, there are just too many variables to tweak. Relevant excerpt from My Wild and Reckless Youth:
To what extent is this post making these points?
Great question. This post is completely ignoring those points, and it’s really not something which should be ignored.
In the context of this post, the question is: ok, we’re trying to hunt down sources of randomness, trying to figure out which of the billions of variables actually matter, but how do we do that? We can’t just guess and check all those variables.