Hello Reader!

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Did you ever stumble through an unfamiliar hotel room at night, desperately searching for that ridiculously placed light switch? Maybe you even stubbed your toe like I once did in a Brussels hotel. That fumbling in the dark perfectly captures what happens when we navigate without a good model of our environment.

As this is the first briefing in August, I'm also giving a personal update at the end.

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You're Facing the Same Challenge as Ancient Vertebrates

Not having a spatial model of the hotel room you sleep in, you're experiencing something fundamental: the quality of your model determines everything.

This isn't just a modern software problem. It's been the difference between survival and extinction for millions of years.

The modeling techniques we use in optimization today have their roots in an evolutionary breakthrough that happened hundreds of millions of years ago.

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The Tale of Freddie the Fish

Picture the ancient oceans, hundreds of millions of years ago. Most creatures navigated like today's ants — following rigid, pre-programmed sequences.

Here's how researchers proved this: ants learn two separate paths — one route from nest to food source, and a different route back from food source to nest. When researchers took an ant that was already carrying food home on the return path and placed it on the outbound path (still carrying its food), something remarkable happened. Instead of turning around to take the shortest route back to the nest, the ant continued its programmed sequence — marching all the way to the food source it had already visited, then turning around and finally following the return path back home. It can't adapt because it has no spatial model, just a series of memorized movements.

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But then came Freddie the fish (yes, I'm naming him). Freddie faced a life-or-death challenge: Being in the middle of the food chain, he needed to find edible plants and smaller creatures without becoming lunch for larger predators.

The turning point came with Freddie's inner ear — his sense of balance. This seemingly simple addition gave him a superpower: he could distinguish whether he was moving toward something approaching him, or whether that something was moving toward him. Moving toward meant potential food. Something moving toward him meant potential danger.

But Freddie's breakthrough went deeper than just sensing movement. His descendants began remembering not just sequences of actions, but spatial relationships. They built mental maps. When a predator interrupted their hunt and they had to flee, these smart fish could take the shortest route back to promising feeding spots — not just retrace their original path.

This spatial modeling was not perfect - after all, the ocean changed very quickly -, but it was so effective that Freddie's lineage thrived. While other creatures wasted energy following inefficient routes, Freddie's descendants navigated optimally. They had more time for reproduction, passed on their modeling abilities, and eventually evolved into mammals, primates, and humans.

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From Fish Brains to Optimization Algorithms

Freddie's evolutionary breakthrough — building internal models to navigate complex environments — is exactly what we do when we create optimization models today.

Just as Freddie's spatial model wasn't perfect but was enormously useful, our optimization models don't need to capture every detail of reality. They need to capture the right details to guide us toward better decisions.

The lesson Freddie learned through natural selection applies directly to your work: model quality determines result quality. A fish with a poor spatial model starved or got eaten. Even though we humans have great navigation skills (optimization algorithms), with a poor problem model (such as in an unfamiliar hotel room) we produce decisions that hurt rather than help.

This is why "garbage in, garbage out" isn't just a programming cliche — it's an evolutionary truth. The vertebrate brain's success came from building better models of the world, not from processing more data or calculating faster.

By the way - the story of Freddie the fish is inspired by a chapter in the Book "A Brief History of Intelligence" by Max Bennet.

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An update from Tim

Looking back on July, two things stood out to me:

My family's large annual summer meeting happend in July. We combined our best selfmade cookies with fresh cherries from grandpa's cherry tree, connected over an intergenerational olympiad, and enjoyed an elaborate Greek dinner.

Additionally, the launch of Bluebird Briefings happened. I'm hoping to make it bigger and impactful for many optimization enthusiasts. Please reach out anytime you have suggestions for improvements — you might see them implemented in the very next email. Or, if something truly resonates with you or proves valuable, let me know that too — you might get more of it soon :)

And of course, sharing is caring - if you like Bluebird Briefings, consider sharing briefings.bluebirdoptimization.com with everyone who might be interested.

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Until the next iteration!

Tim Varelmann

​Bluebird Optimization​

Complicated Decisions - Simply Automated!

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