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made me think of slouching as sagging into local minima in a fitness landscape. Hill climbing would be the opposite action. I also thought about black holes
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This is wrong. Both minima and maxima are optima, and you do gradient ascent/descent to reach both. Just a change of sign. Think of slouching as never reaching *either* a peak or trough, but following the shoulder contours from valley to valley, weaving through saddle points