Even if only a small fraction of those combinations are useful, there’s still a lot of space to stake out a territory. [...] Thanks to the “curse” of dimensionality, these goldmines are not in any danger of exhausting.
A blessing on the supply side is still a curse on the demand side. A lot of empty hyperspace for you to be the closest expert in, just means that when there’s a problem at a precise intersection of statistical-gerontological-macroeconomic-chemistry, the nearest expert might be far away.
Maybe think about this in the context of seeking a romantic partner: as you add more independent traits to your wishlist, your pool of potential matches goes down exponentially. (And God help you if some of your desired traits are anticorrelated.) Suddenly being alone in a high-dimensional space feels less comforting!
A blessing on the supply side is still a curse on the demand side. A lot of empty hyperspace for you to be the closest expert in, just means that when there’s a problem at a precise intersection of statistical-gerontological-macroeconomic-chemistry, the nearest expert might be far away.
Maybe think about this in the context of seeking a romantic partner: as you add more independent traits to your wishlist, your pool of potential matches goes down exponentially. (And God help you if some of your desired traits are anticorrelated.) Suddenly being alone in a high-dimensional space feels less comforting!