I think when we talk about optimization by proxy we usually compare something that tracks the desired quality much more precisely compared to another variable which we use as a computational shortcut. That is meaningful enough a distinction.
This reminds me of a discussion in some forum where somebody said that it was “impossible to compress a DVD losslessly because it is already lossy”. Of course, what was actually meant was lossless compression of that lossy data, not of the original source.
I think when we talk about optimization by proxy we usually compare something that tracks the desired quality much more precisely compared to another variable which we use as a computational shortcut. That is meaningful enough a distinction.
This reminds me of a discussion in some forum where somebody said that it was “impossible to compress a DVD losslessly because it is already lossy”. Of course, what was actually meant was lossless compression of that lossy data, not of the original source.