Neither. It's more akin to the fundamental theorem of calculus. If you follow your data from point A to point B along some differential path, you can sum up/int

Neither. It's more akin to the fundamental theorem of calculus. If you follow your data from point A to point B along some differential path, you can sum up/integrate the steps to follow your data in a single jump from point A to point B directly (with the jump in terms of those integrals). It's a super interesting viewpoint on gradient descent and models that use it that could be really useful in looking at and understanding those models abstractly, but isn't saying anything about suitability for different tasks.