[ealexhudson]

I think to be clear, brute force generally means an iterative search of a solution space. I don't think that's what this system is doing, and it's not like it's following some search path and returning as early as possible.

It's similar that a lot of wrong answers are being thrown up, but I think this is more like a probabilistic system which is being pruned than a walk of the solution space. It's much smarter, but not as smart as we would like.

[lelanthran]

> I think to be clear, brute force generally means an iterative search of a solution space.

Sure, but not an exhaustive one - you stop when you get a solution[1]. Brute force does not require an exhaustive search in order to be called brute-force.

GP was using the argument that because it is not exhaustive, it cannot be brute-force. That's the wrong argument. Brute-force doesn't have to be exhaustive to be brute-force.

[1] Or a good enough solution.

[naasking]

A brute force search can be expected to find a solution after a more thorough search of the space of possibilities. If it really is only searching 0.000001% of that space before finding solutions, then some structure of the problem is guiding the search and it's no longer brute force.