i’ve found this replicates in writing as a way of preventing writer’s block. initially, I thought the issue here is that the subjectiveness of the goal (i.e. producing a high quality photo) creates inertia, but even on tasks that have a clear success criterion (i.e. writing the fastest kernel), this happens.
we just aren’t too good at reaching the optimal point immediately (and its often not known what this point looks like), we just do noisy gradient steps and make local updates in real life
i’ve found this replicates in writing as a way of preventing writer’s block. initially, I thought the issue here is that the subjectiveness of the goal (i.e. producing a high quality photo) creates inertia, but even on tasks that have a clear success criterion (i.e. writing the fastest kernel), this happens.
we just aren’t too good at reaching the optimal point immediately (and its often not known what this point looks like), we just do noisy gradient steps and make local updates in real life