REINFORCE's two views don't conflict: policy gradients and synthetic data unify at the fixed point
jessi_cata · x · 2026-09-12
Asked how to reconcile the decision-theoretic view of RL with a mental model of "objective-directed synthetic data generation", jessicata argues there's no contradiction: REINFORCE shows how to approximate policy gradients via stochastic policy rollouts (naturally viewable as synthetic data), and the fixed point of that process is exactly what the KKT analysis characterizes.
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