4 ms·

Here's a story of a guy who used the same method to come up with the optimal diet for himself: https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/decision/1990-dantzig.pdf h

Here's a story of a guy who used the same method to come up with the optimal diet for himself: https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/decision/1990-dantzig.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/decision/1990-dantzig.... The first try he ended up with a diet that required 500 gallons of vinegar a day. There was a mistake in the data that give vinegar 0 weight. The second try ended up with 200 bouillon cubes per day. He didn't put a limit on salt content. Then it gave him 2 pounds of bran per day. And when he put a limit on that, it changed to two pounds of black molasses. His wife put a stop to it after that. Optimization is very dangerous when applied in large quantities. The vast majority of good solutions of any high dimensional problem will end up in weird edge cases.

cornholio 9y ago
Clearly he was not optimizing for overall individual welfare - there are strong diminishing returns for any single ingredient. Culinary and psychological satisfaction is a valid target for optimization, otherwise the individual will drop the diet and endanger the quality of nutrition, given a limited budget. Or he might outright commit suicide after the second week, not healthy at all.
Scaevolus 9y ago
It's even better than that: "At this point Anne got tired of the whole game. Speaking firmly so that I would know who was boss, she said, "I have been studying the various menus the computer has been generating. There are some good ideas there that I can use. I'll put you on MY diet." She did and I lost 22 pounds."
mayoff 9y ago
And for those who don't know anything else about George Dantzig, the author of that article: There's an urban legend about a college student who shows up late for a math class, sees some problems written on the board, assumes they're homework, and solves them over the weekend, but it turns out the professor wrote the problems on the board as examples of open problems in the field. This urban legend is true, and George Dantzig was the student. https://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp https://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bllguo 9y ago
It's funny - the author isn't just some guy, it's George Dantzig. Relevant because he is one of the fathers of linear programming. He and his simplex algo are actually referred to in the wiki page
Laakeri 9y ago
Optimization is not dangerous, it's just that coming up with the correct model is hard.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  No model is perfectly correct. That's the problem. Any model that approaches perfection would be unimaginably complicated.

cornholio 9y ago

Clearly he was not optimizing for overall individual welfare - there are strong diminishing returns for any single ingredient. Culinary and psychological satisfaction is a valid target for optimization, otherwise the individual will drop the diet and endanger the quality of nutrition, given a limited budget. Or he might outright commit suicide after the second week, not healthy at all.

Scaevolus 9y ago

It's even better than that: "At this point Anne got tired of the whole game. Speaking firmly so that I would know who was boss, she said, "I have been studying the various menus the computer has been generating. There are some good ideas there that I can use. I'll put you on MY diet." She did and I lost 22 pounds."

mayoff 9y ago

And for those who don't know anything else about George Dantzig, the author of that article: There's an urban legend about a college student who shows up late for a math class, sees some problems written on the board, assumes they're homework, and solves them over the weekend, but it turns out the professor wrote the problems on the board as examples of open problems in the field. This urban legend is true, and George Dantzig was the student. https://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp https://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

bllguo 9y ago

It's funny - the author isn't just some guy, it's George Dantzig. Relevant because he is one of the fathers of linear programming. He and his simplex algo are actually referred to in the wiki page

Laakeri 9y ago

Optimization is not dangerous, it's just that coming up with the correct model is hard.

Houshalter 9y ago
No model is perfectly correct. That's the problem. Any model that approaches perfection would be unimaginably complicated.