Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Call for new SIAI Visiting Fellows, on a rolling basis - Less Wrong

29 Post author: AnnaSalamon 01 December 2009 01:42AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 December 2009 07:22:22AM 0 points [-]

random sampling via variability is an effective way to search

No it's not. It is one of the few search methods that are simple enough to understand without reading an AI textbook, so a lot of nontechnical people know about it and praise it and assign too much credit to it. And there are even a few problem classes where it works well, though what makes a problem this "easy" is hard to understand without reading an AI textbook. But no, it's not a very impressive kind of search.