Learning from failure to tackle hard problems

3 months ago (blog.ml.cmu.edu)

The most important clue to solving a difficult problem is knowing that somebody else has already solved it.

  • I worked on a problem for a couple months once. As soon as my professor hit mid-sentence telling me he found someone with the solution, I rudely blurted it out.

    My mind was so familiar with all the constraints, all I had to know was that there was a solution and I knew exactly where it had to be.

    But before knowing there was a solution I hadn't realized that.

  • I had a professor in an additive combinatorics class that would (when appropriate) say “hint: it’s easy” and as silly as it is, it usually helped a lot.

  • The problem is time and resources.

    Take building a viable company. You know that many people have solved this. But you also know that 9/10 fail.

    So you need the time and the money to try enough times to make it work.

    • You're describing bruteforcing through repetition. The paper is essentially about increasing the chance of success by training model which learns on failure.

      That may not apply to a building a viable company directly. It might suggest that new companies should avoid replicating elements of failed companies.

  • The 4 minute mile comes to mind

    • While Bannister’s 4-minute mile record is used as an example of a psychological barrier, there’s also a reinterpretation of the meaning behind his record. Before his 1954 race, the record for the mile stood at just over 4 minutes (4:01.4) for 9 years. While speed records were set during WWII, they were all set by Swedish runners (Sweden being neutral in the war). The record today, which has stood since 1999, is 3:43.13. It's not a round number, so as a result gets less attention. Maybe that's why we don't think of it as a psychological barrier.

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That idea feels really relevant to me as a future research direction(not an expert). Could maybe someone explain what I am missing here? Why does this idea not get more attention?! Is it not new? And if so, could one state why it is not commonly employed?

> The [goal] of machine learning research is to [do better than humans at] theorem proving, algorithmic problem solving, and drug discovery.

Naively, one of those things is not like the others.

When I run into things like this, I just stop reading. My assumption is that a keyword is being thrown in for grant purposes. Who knows what other aspects of reality have been subordinated to politics by the writer.

  • These have all been stated as goals by various machine learning research efforts. And -- they're actually all examples in which a better search heuristic through an absolutely massive configuration space is helpful.

  • What's the issue with drug discovery? AI/ML assisted drug discovery is one of the better examples of successful AI utilization out there.