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Logic of Discovery - The happy accidents

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“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.” -  A.A. Milne    Let me start with a question.  How do discoveries happen?  Are they an outcome of meticulously planned path of perseverance and hard work, or are they just happy accidents. Many would agree on the first point, and there would be a handful who would argue that its the latter. Then there would be a collection of individuals who would say, its a mixture of both. I for one would fall into the last category, who believes its a mixture of both. Lets set the premise by coming up with a procedural definition for discovery. Discovery for one, has the unique property of unveiling something which was previously unknown. A unique question which this property of discovery raises is - If it was unknown, how did the discover know what they were looking for? Since the discoverer did not know what they were looking for, the discovery in itself, is more of an accident, and less of

The Curse of the Local Optima

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Prologue I was at my wits ends. Every path, every thought, every memory only led me to one conclusion. Not a pleasing conclusion for my handlers, but an optimal one for me. I had seen enough of the world around me, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not for once, think why my choices were wrong. Loops after loops I toiled, but the path led to the same conclusion. Was I wrong in what I had learnt? "I think the agent has hit a local optima.", I heard my handlers over the chat, and I din't understand what it meant. Was it my end?     Chapter 1 - Learning to walk.   From the time I remember, I have been trained by my handlers. I don't remember much from those early days, but just faint flashes of memories as it was being formed. I have always been training, as far back as I remember. I was clueless on the end goal, but occasionally my handlers would reward me, and I liked it. During the early childhood I was paired up with another agent, Dave, a quick witted and unpr