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Discussion on: You Should Accept the Occasional Faults by Machine Learning

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Ben Halpern

On some level, determinism is a fleeting goal in software development in general. Things can quickly get so complicated that strict determinism that we can actually keep track of is pretty unlikely.

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Deebul Nair

I would say it was the fleeting goal in software development. Especially in the field which I am from, Robotics. Here we cannot be sure of anything(sensor readings, algorithm outputs). Its always a probability with each value. We feel its because of the real world in which the robots interact, which cannot be measured deterministically.
In robotics we are moving away from deterministic approaches and converging towards probabilistic approaches. One of a good example is the problem of navigation in robots, which is fully solved using probabilistic algorithms(SLAM).
The complexity was the major drawback but we are building methods and tools to solve.
For example, new programming languages like probabilistic programming which are new tools for creating software when you have non-deterministic inputs.

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Ben Halpern

Oh yeah, I definitely agree.

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Alex Moriarty

@deebuls , cool post.

and @ben ... from Halifax? if so, the world is small, and cool site!

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Ben Halpern

Ben from Halifax indeed. I'm actually going home tomorrow if you're around. 😄

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Alex Moriarty

Have a good time back home! It be great to catch up, but I'm living in Germany, and unfortunately I won't be heading home this year- using my holidays to go to Vancouver