Human Optimization Pipelines

Get unlimited access to the best of Medium for less than $1/week.Become a memberHuman Optimization PipelinesAll Humans are Rational ActorsJack Blair6 min read·Just nowTDLR:
I was trying to optimize my instagram for conversion. Then I realized, every person is just trying to optimize for their given conditions. That’s why frat bros optimize for drinking and beer pong. That’s why gangstas optimize for sagging shorts, etc. These high level trends are like vacuums of optimization. Those who reach them first are pushed up by the people following them. But, these entire vacuums pipelines are also optimizing and reshuffling themselves.

Even though many people seem stupid, most people are smart and rational. We just all optimize for different world views. The ability to see all the world views/vacuums of optimization is the greatest gift.If you’re able to create a vacuum of optimization [“trend”] you’re chilling.Actual Article:Human Optimization Pipelines (HOPs) weaving their way through the optimal choice vector space.Human Optimization Pipelines (HOPs)Every time I leave for vacation, my priorities change so much. This Spring Break, my goals immediately turned to getting tan, fixing my skincare, revamping my playlists, and taking creative photos.This all seems perfectly normal until you compare it to my priorities from a week prior- working out everyday, coding a local AI mac application, and launching my school’s first ever AI hackathon.How could my priorities shift so rapidly to something so unrelated? For the previous 5 months, being tan was the least of my worries. So how could it all of a sudden become such a critical issue?Let’s abstract this for a second. As humans, we are always optimizing for whatever we perceive to the valuable. At any given moment, this could be family, health, career, creative works, etc. That is, humans wills consistently make the best decision for themselves, from their perspective of the world. One you understand what someone is optimizing for, all of their actions and intentions become quite rational.As a side example, this is why what you are informed of is so valuable. I have been a Tesla fan for several years, and continuously read articles from Apple News about how well the autopilot is doing, how safe the cars are, and how much stock increases. My dad, however, receives articles about how bad the production is going and why is electric f150 is better than the Cybertruck. Whenever we debate about Tesla, we can’t agree on a single this, despite both being rational actors. Two people who are both rational, can completely misalign because of the context of their information.Back in the context of optimization, my entire life, I have always been dumbfounded why homeless people find it the best use of their time to ask for money from random strangers. It seems like there has to be a better way to survive in that circumstance? Right? Clearly, because it is so universal, that action is the optimum for their situation, regardless of whether or not I can understand it. Moreover, if I were in the same position, I would probably do the same thing.This issue of not understanding other people's optimization functions (basically their “worldview”) is probably the largest reason why we have disagreement in society, in the same way that two sides receiving different information is the largest reason why we have disagreement in a debate. For the most part, all humans are rational.Human Optimization Pipelines (HOPs) weaving their way through the optimal choice vector space.I cannot stress enough, the problem here is with decision and optimization context. What tweets did you read today? Who do you hang out around? What’s the weather like? This reality defining information I like to call medium or worldview.This is cool and all, but I am much more interested in the change of this optimization function over time. What causes people to change what they optimize for, just like I did over Spring Break? and how can this be predicted?This is particularly interesting to me because my optimization function has completely reversed direction over the past two years. I used to be a robot that only focussed on building technology, coding, and getting good grades. Now, my optimization function is personal happiness, cooking, style, organization, jewelry, working out, and coding AIs to help me. Anyone who grew up in my same situation, I have no doubt, would have ended up exactly like me. And the majority of my interests, hobbies, skills, and projects were all determined by my environment, and not really by me.This is my opinion on the nature vs nurture argument as well. I believe the vast majority of a person is shaped by their upbringing. Additionally, with this line of reasoning you can easily deduce there is no free will².Human Optimization Pipelines (HOPs) weaving their way through the optimal choice vector space.Now let’s finally talk about human optimization pipelines. I believe these model the way your optimization changes overtime. What makes you care less about a stanley mug one day, then buy one the next? Or what makes thousands of people create of follow a tiktok trend?These are determined mostly by life events. For example, a woman optimizing for an incredible career will immediately start optimizing for her child when she gets pregnant. Someone in a tramatic event will immediatley start optimizing for life expierences one they realize how valuable it is. Every single this you are exposed to shapes you optimization pipeline, bouncing you down a path of rational decisions that will dictate your life.The idea of a frat bro optimizing for the best party, a rapper optimizing for the saggiest shorts, a librarian optimizing for the most organized library. People don’t choose to be in any of these positions, but once they are there, they optimize. In fact, optimization may have lead them there in the first place.We get to live in a hilariously cool world where people optimize from a million different places for a million different things. so whatever your optimizing for, pursue it at full force.What am I up to? I would describe my current human optimization pipeline as “enlightened tech-bro.” My top priorities are working out everyday, coding in my free time, and adventuring to beaches and mountains in a heartbeat.At the end of the day, once you understand someone’s worldview, they are quite predictable. So live your life to the fullest of your optimization! ❤️Footnote¹In the same way, for the most part, all AIs are rational. I know this comes across as ridiculous to anyone not in the AI space, but these LLMs are honestly smarter than humans, for their worldview. They can only see text-for now- but given the right information will consistently make the best decision. In fact, almost all of the error people describe when using AI is a matter of context, data, medium, or worldview for the AI not having enough information to rationally solve the problem.A great example of this is someone merging their car with another vehicle in their blind spot. The driver of the car merging checked all his mirrors, and makes a totally safe and rational decision to merge into the next lane. But, from the perspective of the driver in the blindspot, some dumbass just tried to swerve him off the road. Sometimes a completely rational decision looks ridiculously stupid after finding out new information.This is the reason why I believe we have achieved AGI. We have models that can optimize for any given (worldview/reality/medium) which means that AI is now just a problem of adapting the models realities to include these new mediums of data.Footnote²With this logic, every decision made from your human brain and theoretically be predicted to a perfect accuracy. Meaning, if we had technology good enough to model every neuron of your brain, we could predict what you would think, say, and do, proving that your conscious is not “in control of your decisions,” but merely thinks it is as it monitors your neurons activate down their predictable paths.Footnote³This line of reasoning was validated to me today when I met Matt Steele (https://www.mattsteele.co/) who has worked on some shockingly similar products to mine. He is an incredible person working to solve problems in his daily life just like me, and its seems that through our independent rational decision making we landed on the building “same” products in different conditions.His app, Solv [https://solvapp.net/] (equivalent to my BoilerGPT (https://boilergpt.framer.website/]) uses almost the exact same tech stack, vector indexing solution, and prompting strategies. Even though we never met before, or seen each others projects, we both optimized for our individual mediums and found the best possible solutions, vacuuming us into the same optimization pipeline.Optimization Pyschology Behavioural Science Humanity Rational Decision Making Written by Jack Blair 3 Followers🎓 PURDUE '26 | 🎓 TJHSST '22 | 💻 Full Stack Developer | 🔭 Founder | 🧠 AI Researcher | 🦅 Eagle ScoutEdit profileMore from Jack BlairJack Blair Writing a “Live Follower Count” Python Program for my WebsiteAn Alternative to traditional webscraping with Applescript and OCR9 min read·10 hours agoJack Blair The 10 Best Restaurants at PurduePurdue University is a bubble in the middle of no-where. 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