LifeScientist123 t1_jdiis55 wrote on March 24, 2023 at 5:10 PM

Reply to comment by nicku_a in [P] Reinforcement learning evolutionary hyperparameter optimization - 10x speed up by nicku_a

I'm also new to this so forgive me if this is a dumb question. My understanding was that RL is superior to evolutionary algorithms because in evolutionary algos "mutation" is random, so you evaluate a lot of dud "offspring". In RL algos, eg MCTS, you also do tree search randomly, but you're iteratively picking the best set of actions, without evaluating many dud options. Am I wrong? Somehow mixing RL with evolutionary algorithms seems like a step backwards

nicku_a OP t1_jdkdxy8 wrote on March 25, 2023 at 12:52 AM

Good question! So what we’re doing here is not specifically applying evolutionary algorithms instead of RL. We’re applying evolutionary algorithms as a method of HPO, while still using RL to learn and it’s advantages. Take a look at my other comments explaining how this works, and check out the docs for more information.