To navigate life we create mental models of the world out there, and then we confuse the models for reality.
What is the explore/exploit tradeoff?
The gambler needs to learn new knowledge about the machines and simultaneously use what they have already learned to optimize their decisions. In the literature, these two activities are referred to as exploring and exploiting. You can’t do both things at the same time. When you explore, you are pulling new arms on the bandit trying to figure out their expected payout. When you exploit, you pull the best arm you’ve found. You need to find the right balance. If you spend too little time exploring, you get stuck playing a machine with a low expected payoff. But if you spend too much time exploring, you will earn less than you would if you played the best arm. This is the explore/exploit trade-off.
explore: open
To navigate life we create mental models of the world out there, and then we confuse the models for reality. The trick is to collide your mental model with the outside world as often as possible. This is what exploring does.
If you can break inaccurate mental models, life becomes easier to navigate. But how do you do that? I know two ways.
Find people who understand things better than you and read what they have to say. Read with the intention of answering your questions. If you can’t find the answers, email them.
Perform experiments. By this I don’t mean do random things. I mean, STATE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS and FIND WAYS TO TEST IF THEY ARE FALSE. Most of the time, the slot machine of an experiment yields nothing. But that’s ok. A few will rearrange the world around you.
But, as I was saying before, there is a tradeoff. Time spent exploring to gather new information means less time acting on it. Besides, exploiting is often more valuable than it seems, since narrowing your focus to “slot machines” you know are promising can have nonlinear returns.
exploit: focus
John Ives on designing the iPhone: One of the things Steve [Jobs] would say [to me] because he was worried I wasn’t focused — he would say, “How many things have you said no to?” I would tell him I said no to this. And I said no to that. But he knew I wasn’t interested in doing those things. There was no sacrifice in saying no [to those things]. What focus means is saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea, you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you are focusing on something else.”
Werner Herzog: Although for many years I lived hand to mouth—sometimes in semi-poverty—I have lived like a rich man ever since I started making films. Throughout my life I have been able to do what I truly love, which is more valuable than any cash you could throw at me. At a time when friends were establishing themselves by getting university degrees, going into business, building careers and buying houses, I was making films, investing everything back into my work.
In the terminology of multi-armed bandits, they found a good arm. Then they exploited it to the exclusion of everything else.
Why would focus compound? Part of it is time. If you care about less, you spend more time doing what you care about most. Also, you are always nonconsciously processing the thing you focus on. So cutting priorities means you work even when it looks like you’re not working.
comments
心外无别法。
Interested in many things are just nature to us. To focus is not easy. To say no to things that attract you is difficult. Another hard constraint is the limit of time.
How to open your heart? Break it to open. Having a broken heart is the only way to have a life.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
—W.H. Auden, “The More Loving One”