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Algorithms to Live By Summary
About Algorithms to Live By Book
An exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind.
What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of the new and familiar is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not. Computers, like us, confront limited space and time, so computer scientists have been grappling with similar problems for decades. And the solutions they’ve found have much to teach us.
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths show how algorithms developed for computers also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one’s inbox to peering into the future, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
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Compelling and entertaining, Algorithms to Live By is packed with practical advice about how to use time, space, and effort more efficiently. And it's a fascinating exploration of the workings of computer science and the human mind
The Computer Science of Human Decisions
Algorithms to Live By offers shortcuts and hacks to help streamline your life. Algorithms are inserted into computers and other forms of technology to solve problems. However, there is no reason that we cannot use algorithms in our everyday lives. Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths describe how algorithms have been used for centuries. Plus, how we use specific algorithms daily. However, some algorithms are more efficient than others. This book provides an outline of the algorithms that can help make your life easier and more enjoyable.
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Unless we’re willing to spend eons striving for perfection every time we encounter a hitch, hard problems demand that instead of spinning our tires we imagine easier versions and tackle those first. When applied correctly, this is not just wishful thinking, not fantasy or idle daydreaming. It’s one of our best ways of making progress.
– BRIAN CHRISTIAN
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Some of the biggest challenges faced by computers and human minds alike: how to manage finite space, finite time, limited attention, unknown unknowns, incomplete information, and an unforeseeable future; how to do so with grace and confidence; and how to do so in a community with others who are all simultaneously trying to do the same.
– BRIAN CHRISTIAN
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Optimal Stopping
When you are hiring, scouting houses to buy, options to consider — when should you stop looking?
You stop looking too early, you don’t know if someone better isn’t going to come along. You stop too late, you might have passed on the best candidate already.
Mathematically — you should stop looking after evaluating 37% of all the options you’re willing to look at. After the 37% option — if anything/anyone comes along who is better than everyone else before you should make the decision.
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Explore vs Exploit
When should you be exploring new options and when should you start settling for the best option you already know? Consider these concepts:
- Regret Minimisation Framework: When you look back on your life when you’re 80, what will you regret least?
- Exploring: In decision making, we consider the single highest pay-off on our single decision, but in the long term, it’s way more efficient to first explore your options, before exploiting the highest pay-off decision.
- Ageing: Deepest insight about later life is that you can exploit knowledge acquired over decades — life should get better over time.
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The right action can produce a bad outcome. Process is all we have control over, not results.
BRIAN CHRISTIAN, TOM GRIFFITHS
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i love to take notes while reading' hope many of you have the same habit♥
All human knowledge is uncertain, inexact, and partial
BERTRAND RUSSELL
5
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