Title: Is Epicurus the father of Reinforcement Learning?,
Abstract: The Epicurean Philosophy is commonly thought as simplistic and hedonistic.
Here I discuss how this is a misconception and explore its link to
Reinforcement Learning. Based on the letters of Epicurus, I construct an
objective function for hedonism which turns out to be equivalent of the
Reinforcement Learning objective function when omitting the discount factor. I
then discuss how Plato and Aristotle 's views that can be also loosely linked
to Reinforcement Learning, as well as their weaknesses in relationship to it.
Finally, I emphasise the close affinity of the Epicurean views and the Bellman
equation.