Tag: explore vs exploit
4 posts tagged "explore vs exploit".
The fundamental trade-off between gathering new information and cashing in on what you already know — whether to try a new restaurant or return to your favourite, to keep sampling careers or commit to one. Borrowed from the "multi-armed bandit" problems of computer science and decision theory, it gives a rigorous frame for life choices: explore more when you are young and the future is long, exploit more as your runway shortens. The blog uses it as a lens on decision-making, career capital, and the deliberate cultivation of optionality, where a phase of wide exploration buys the knowledge to later concentrate your bets. It pairs naturally with serendipity — exploration is how you put yourself in the path of good luck.
Posts:
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The Self-Experimentation Guide
A self-experiment that doesn't generate obvious results, like taking tiny, sub-threshold doses of LSD, crosses the line into fiddling on the margin.
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The Embarrassing Problem of Premature Exploitation
Video games give you a clear pathway for leveling up into a muscle-bound hero, and impressing scantily-clad elven princesses with your Very Big Sword.
Also mentioned in:
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Constraints That Liberate
Something I’ve learned the hard way is that you can absolutely have too much of a good thing. Unconstrained freedom is, well... kind of freaky, actually.
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The Best of the Best Books I Read in 2018
Of the 100+ books I read this year - curated by Deep Dish readers and other people of impeccable taste - these are the cream of the crop.
