
Life is y = f(x) and can be optimized via gradient descent - farza
https://farza.substack.com/p/omg-are-u-wearing-unprofessional
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lexpar
It's not really a great analogy.

In machine learning the cost function is static and is defined by a smart
person working hard to come up with something sensible. In life, the cost
function changes constantly and is developed consciously as well as
subconsciously. Indeed, the training examples (previous experiences) will
influence the dynamically evolving cost function.

Moving along the gradient in a ML framework means that every refinement of the
framework will influence cost non-positively, while in life we often act in
ways that decrease utility.

Also, to put it bluntly, life is just a lot more complicated than that.

~~~
joker3
Or to put it more succinctly, life is path-dependent.

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ilaksh
It's a few trivial points dressed up with remedial ML concepts.

The homeless problem is not all about drug abuse and that idea is harmful
because it's used as an excuse to ignore it.

Everyone knows that they need to have life goals. Even addicts know that they
are optimizing the wrong thing.

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georgeecollins
There is a really interesting idea in this book, "The Myth of Meritocracy"
that we are now forcing ourselves to invest so much into human capital (and
his thesis is that most of that investment is a waste in an education / self
improvement arms race) that we have to optimize the return of our lives,
particularly financially but alos in other quality metrics. I just don't think
this is a good way to think about your life.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Life is becoming one long job interview and it's only going to get worse as
more data is collected.

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perl4ever
Seems to me that life is fundamentally different from y = f(x). It's more like
an imperative x = f(x), where the output keeps getting fed back into the
input. That inherently produces more interesting behavior, even when f is
relatively simple.

And the thing that is missing in AI today is the back-and-forth conversion of
correlations to causal relationships, which, yes, humans are not that good at,
generally don't consciously do, but have a built-in mechanism for.

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mehrdadn
Life is single-objective?

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kpU8efre7r
I've thought this as well but there is more. You are constantly pulling from
memory and examining that input combined with other inputs from other memories
that you might not have had in the past resulting in a new memory and input
built entirely from past memory.

~~~
tuesdayrain
There are a scary amount of parallels between humans and advanced robots built
out of organic materials.

