I’m pretty happy to count all these things as optimization. Much of the issue I find with using the feedback loop definition is, as you point to, is the difficulty of figuring out things like “is there a lot here?”, suggesting there might be a better, more general model for what I’ve been pointing to work feedback loop because it’s simply the closest, most general model I know. Which actually points back to the way I phrased it before, which isn’t formalized but I think does come closer to expansively capturing all the things I think make sense to group together as “optimization”.
I’m pretty happy to count all these things as optimization. Much of the issue I find with using the feedback loop definition is, as you point to, is the difficulty of figuring out things like “is there a lot here?”, suggesting there might be a better, more general model for what I’ve been pointing to work feedback loop because it’s simply the closest, most general model I know. Which actually points back to the way I phrased it before, which isn’t formalized but I think does come closer to expansively capturing all the things I think make sense to group together as “optimization”.