Scott H Young Podcast (Ep 39) - Explore or exploit: The hidden decision that guides your life
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Oct 4, 2019 
Delve into the dilemma of explore or exploit decisions, balancing new opportunities with familiar paths. Explore strategies like randomness and time constraints, noting age's influence on decision-making. Emphasize the importance of navigating local maxima traps and prioritizing long-term perspectives over immediate gains for optimal decision-making.
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Every Decision Is An Explore Versus Exploit Problem
- Life decisions often reduce to explore versus exploit trade-offs that repeat across contexts like restaurants, careers, and relationships.
- Choosing your first-loved restaurant dish exemplifies exploiting a known good option instead of randomly exploring alternatives.
Use A Fixed Randomness Rule To Explore
- Use simple heuristics to balance exploration and exploitation, like exploiting your best-known option most of the time and experimenting occasionally.
- Example: order your favorite dish two thirds of the time and try something different one third of the time.
Time Horizon Shapes How Much You Explore
- Perceived time horizon strongly shifts exploration: more time left increases willingness to try new things, limited time pushes you to play safe.
- This explains why children explore heavily while older people orient toward known rewards.