I let algorithms randomize my life for two years | Max Hawkins

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What if everything in your life was randomized: from the food you ate to the things you did and the places you traveled? Computer scientist Max Hawkins created algorithms to make decisions like these for him — and got hooked on the experience for two years. He shares how relinquishing choice sent him across the world and opened him up to the beautiful complexity and richness of life. It makes you wonder: What lies just outside your comfort zone?

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46 Comments on I let algorithms randomize my life for two years | Max Hawkins

  1. Algorithms need to not only show you more of the same but some of the opposite and some that are on a parallel path. They need to show you the map of possibilities.

    • If algorithms have to show you possibilities then you can get off the internet because algorithms can never show you possibilities

    • @Manu John Not true. Many algorithms in my life have shown me many possibilities. The original YT algorithm was great for finding different things because anything with even a loose association was suggested. Even if it wasn’t associated with what the previous video was at all.

  2. Huge fan of both randomness and algorithms. I think BOTH are the stuff of life. I am a retired software engineer and love the challenges of genetic algorithms (and their inherent randomness), consciousness, or the concepts of free will. However, as a human being, I suspect we all have embedded instructions that can shape our choices and behaviors if we pay attention (such as doing the least harm possible). It is not much different than the instructions a spider follows building a web or a beaver building a dam. Even though we may not be able to verbalize it, the instinct still exists. Perhaps someday we can shape or create an algorithm to simulate such … instructions. Rather than blindly following random choices (that as you point out may not truly be random) the algorithm might provide us with a BETTER choice rather than a random choice (that is built on REAL, collective, big data that comes from random choices). Even though a computer might select a random choice, it could use accurate data (as can our own personal experience) to select the BEST choice from the random choices which seems similar to the app you created.

    • Exactly, we need an AI sidekick that guides us through life and creates the best possible version of ourselves.
      There is an episode from the “Your Undivided Attention” podcast with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin and Yuval Noah Harari. They talk about an AI sidekick that’s similar to your idea.

  3. I loved how he switched up the ending like that, not only for its effect, but also because of how it resembles his passion for randomness.

  4. The talk is nice and all, but all I want to do after a year of the pandemic is somehow just sit amid an auditorium full of people and watch a talk. Any talk.

  5. “if you just do the default,
    follow your preferences,
    go in the direction that everything else is going,
    it is easy to get caught in a place where you can be control”

    This was a really good ted talk

  6. what he said is actually so brave. he is telling us to not let the social media feed us with “preferred” content and let it dictate our life. wow.

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