“Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn’t sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it’s backed up by proofs.” — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“One of the implicit principles of computer science, as odd as it may sound, is that computation is bad: the underlying directive… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Put broadly, the object of study in mathematics is truth; the object of study in computer science is complexity.” — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Computer scientists would call this a “ping attack” or a “denial of service” attack: give a system an overwhelming number of trivial… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Computer scientists have been working on finding this balance for more than fifty years. They even have a name for it: the… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“To get a better sense for these findings, we talked to UC Riverside’s Amnon Rapoport, who has been running optimal stopping experiments… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Even the best strategy sometimes yields bad results—which is why computer scientists take care to distinguish between “process” and “outcome.” If you… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“The same challenge also appears in an even more fraught setting: dating. Optimal stopping is the science of serial monogamy. Simple algorithms… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“It’s fairly intuitive that never exploring is no way to live. But it’s also worth mentioning that never exploiting can be every… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Though time management seems a problem as old as time itself, the science of scheduling began in the machine shops of the… — Brian Christian Copy Share Image
“Though all Christians start a wedding invitation by solemnly declaring their marriage is due to special Divine arrangement, I, as a philosopher, would like… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“It’s fairly intuitive that never exploring is no way to live. But it’s also worth mentioning that never exploiting can be every bit as… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“Forrest Gander: "Maybe the best we can do is try to leave ourselves unprotected. To keep brushing off habits, how we see things and… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“We asked Shoup if his research allows him to optimize his own commute, through the Los Angeles traffic to his office at UCLA. Does… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“look no further than Peter A. Lawrence’s developmental biology text The Making of a Fly, which in April 2011 was selling for $23,698,655.93 (plus… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“Though time management seems a problem as old as time itself, the science of scheduling began in the machine shops of the industrial revolution.… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. —JOHN STUART MILL” — Brian Christian Copy Share
Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“What a familiarity with the construction of Turing test bots had begun to show me was that we fail - again and again- to… — Brian Christian Copy Share
“When our expectations are uncertain and the data are noisy, the best bet is to paint with a broad brush” — Brian Christian Copy Share
“Computer scientists have been working on finding this balance for more than fifty years. They even have a name for it: the explore/exploit tradeoff.” — Brian Christian Copy Share
“We go through digital life, in the twenty-first century, with our guards up. All communication is a Turing test. All communication is suspect.” — Brian Christian Copy Share
“exploration is gathering information, and exploitation is using the information” — Brian Christian Copy Share
