Optimized Hope, Or, The Wisdom of the Algorithms
Book Review: Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths, "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions", William Collins, 2016. After finishing "Decisive" by Chip and Dan Heath , which prescribes a somewhat algorithmic approach to making decisions using the WRAP process, I started reading "Algorithms to Live By". This is a book about what humans can learn from computers, specifically from computer algorithms -- i.e. sequences of steps that are used to solve problems. The problems faced by computer scientists, like how to allocate processing power, when to switch between different tasks, how to use memory resources, and when to collect more data, have parallels in the everyday problems of human thought and action and interaction. As such, the computer scientist's solutions to these problems (whether optimal or merely approximate) can give us some wisdom. Sometimes that wisdom is bittersweet, for instance: "Life is full of problem...