infotropism comments on Incremental Progress and the Valley - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2009 04:42PM

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Comment author: infotropism 04 April 2009 09:37:06PM 3 points [-]

Agreed. History is written by the victors; just as evolution's path is paved with the untold number of those which died for lack of fitness or simply luck.

That which is successful and remains eventually isn't representative of all that has been attempted. Especially when those attempts have been made with little planning, knowledge, method, or even, when they've simply been made at random or based on beliefs that weren't entangled with reality. Holds true of any optimization process.

The less intelligent and "rational" the process, the more trashed byproducts to be quickly forgotten.