Information-theoretic take: algorithms should reduce your surprisal about the world
xiaosun86 · x · 2026-11-05
Researcher xiaosun86 connects Buddhist 'great wisdom relieves endless suffering' to the need for a good world model. His earlier formulation: an algorithm's goal should be reducing the surprisal of users' predictions of future reality — each item shown should reduce the bits needed to model the world, combining KL divergence terms with the world's intrinsic uncertainty to determine wellbeing.
His metaphor: nobody is nutrition deficient from lack of ice cream; people need information of broccoli to better represent reality. A cross-domain take linking information theory, recommender systems, and wellbeing.
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