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The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

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Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#161

Post by sah2ed »

cookiecaper wrote: post #120
daguar wrote: post #45

I think I have to quibble with this: > Here, I propose Scott’s Law: never put order in a system before you understand the structure underneath its chaos. James C. Scott wouldn't probably never underwrite re-ordering of systems from the top down. Central to his argument is that viewing complex systems from any singular position requires a process of simplification (legibility) that prevents a complete understanding. T…

> Here, I propose Scott’s Law: never put order in a system before you understand the structure underneath its chaos. Previously formulated as Chesterton's Fence [0], among others. There's definitely a blind spot in software for the general principle that you should understand a thing well before you decide to remove it. Anyone want to propose some theories on why disregard for an extant body of work tends to plague s…

> Anyone want to propose some theories on why disregard for an extant body of work tends to plague software so extensively?

Removing stuff isn’t restricted to software practitioners but there’s no need to reach for a flashy theory for something that can be adequately explained by human nature, in this case hubris.

Hubris is bound to manifest in any situation when a person with incomplete understanding of the situation, acts like they ‘know best’.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#162

Post by pif »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #49
ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

> Life is one huge proof of that.

No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility.

> And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

It depends on whether you consider a species or an individual. Evolution is great as having species adapting and surviving. But this also means that the individual is hopeless against major incidents.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#163

Post by scotty79 »

pif wrote: post #162
TeMPOraL wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

> Life is one huge proof of that. No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. > And yet the final result is incredibly resilient. It depends on whether you consider a species or an individual. Evolution is great as having species adapting and surviving. But this also means that the individual is hopeless against major incidents.

> No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility.

What? Your body maintains itself daily in harsh environment and onslaught of other life that tries to eat you (mostly microscopic). Once it stops maintaining itself irreversible damage occurs in minutes and you physically fall apart in days.

Your body can keep maintaining itself for many decades. Any natural non living things that can exist that long are rocks. And that's only because they don't move. Show me a non-living solid thing that can move for 70 years at human pace.

A complaint that you can't swap liver the way you swap car battery completely neglects the fact that the liver can maintain itself without moving anywhere, gradually rebuild itself in place for decades despite being regularly poisoned.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#164

Post by pif »

scotty79 wrote: post #163
pif wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life is one huge proof of that. No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. > And yet the final result is incredibly resilient. It depends on whether you consider a species or an individual. Evolution is great as having species adapting and surviving. But this also means that the individual is hopeless against major incidents.

> No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. What? Your body maintains itself daily in harsh environment and onslaught of other life that tries to eat you (mostly microscopic). Once it stops maintaining itself irreversible damage occurs in minutes and you physically fall apart in days. Your body can keep maintaining itself for many decades. Any natural non living things that can exist that…

> A complaint that you can't swap liver...

I'm not complaining! I'm grateful to evolution for providing me such a wonderful mechanism called body.

But, I suppose you don't work in software development, do you? I say so because you, rightfully, took "maintenance" in its literal meaning, like "maintaining it the way it always was".

Unfortunately, in software development (and maybe other professions) maintenance mean simply that people changed their minds or discovered a new business case and your product must adapt, WITHOUT CHANGING ANY OTHER INTERACTION!!!

In real life, you can say: "he died because he drank poison", and it is a sad but accepted statement.

In software development, the same sentence will be rephrased like: "he died because the crappy developer left an unfixed bug in his Liver plugin".

Again, life is wonderful thing, and evolution clearly has to optimize for maximum efficiency. But in businness there are several times when you must give up some (or even much) efficiency for adaptability.

It looks like the author of the article does not understand the need for this tradeoff.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#165

Post by xondono »

ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

The other point I find missing is that this kind algorithmic optimization tends to miss solutions that are quite obvious to "system designers" due to local maxima (evolutionary roadblocks).

For instance, nature has not figure out how to evolve wheels even in flat regions.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#166

Post by scotty79 »

pif wrote: post #164
scotty79 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. What? Your body maintains itself daily in harsh environment and onslaught of other life that tries to eat you (mostly microscopic). Once it stops maintaining itself irreversible damage occurs in minutes and you physically fall apart in days. Your body can keep maintaining itself for many decades. Any natural non living things that can exist that…

> A complaint that you can't swap liver... I'm not complaining! I'm grateful to evolution for providing me such a wonderful mechanism called body. But, I suppose you don't work in software development, do you? I say so because you, rightfully, took "maintenance" in its literal meaning, like "maintaining it the way it always was". Unfortunately, in software development (and maybe other professions) maintenance mean si…

> "he died because he drank poison" > "he died because the crappy developer left an unfixed bug in his Liver plugin"

Rather "He died because dna replication wasn't perfect and caused his liver to develop cancer", but I don't fully agree with article author either.

Chaos is a result of optimising for efficiency but also by doing do very gradually in a piecemeal manner. This kind of process can lead to local optima that are hard to get out of if you don't stop occasionally to rethink things and clean up. The thing is that cleaning up must also be very thoughtfully driven by efficiency. When it's done for aesthetic reasons you end up loosing much of efficiency you worked so hard to discover by making a mess.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#167

Post by PeterStuer »

I'm a 'lover of chaos'. My working desks always gather strata of documents, more often than not disheveling onto the surrounding floor.

This article however rubs me the wrong way right from the start. 'Cars running at the same speed' aren't "efficiency-destroying" nor about spurious 'appearance'. A controlled laminar flow is incredibly more efficient than chaotic turbulence.

It does not get any better later on, when the author waxes lyrically about 'beautiful equilibrium that evolved to satisfy a thousand competing constraint' in the absence of planning, casually glossing over the part where communal zoning regulation prevents not just externality dumping races to the bottom and the basis for non-speculative investment to those that can't afford to gamble or force their own "manu militari" regulation.

While self proclaiming "not suggesting all chaos is good", it is exactly what the rest of the article's suggestive language tries to convey. The deregulation agenda, while not explicitly spelled out, is omnipresent in the tenure of the writing.

P.S. I'm not surprised to learn that the author works for Uber.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#168

Post by Crashbat »

PeterStuer wrote: post #167

I'm a 'lover of chaos'. My working desks always gather strata of documents, more often than not disheveling onto the surrounding floor. This article however rubs me the wrong way right from the start. 'Cars running at the same speed' aren't "efficiency-destroying" nor about spurious 'appearance'. A controlled laminar flow is incredibly more efficient than chaotic turbulence. It does not get any better later on, when…

Very well said, and I think you've hit the nail on the head with regards to the 'deregulation agenda'. The subtext of articles like this is always that interference, in the form of regulations, is a negative action, and by stripping away the messy human meddling we'll reap the rewards. It's never considered that the human meddling is so often done to protect the humans themselves, most often the very weakest or most powerless.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#169

Post by wlesieutre »

coldtea wrote: post #155
wlesieutre wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming they didn't

From the end result described either they didn't try or they weren't successful in doing it. If they did there wouldn't be any changes made to appease the customer.

The fact that the customer was buying 3d printed computer optimized parts in the first place probably indicates that "more advanced" was explained to them.

There are any number of reasons they might not have liked it. Maybe it looked odd because it didn't match the rest of the design. Maybe they were worried about their own customer (of the end product that the part goes into) thinking it didn't look sturdy enough.

If you're designing parts for a rocket then by all means worry about every ounce of weight, but for most stuff if the customer wants it to look less weird you can just make it look less weird. And then charge them for the extra material.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#170

Post by gus_massa »

z3t4 wrote: post #98
Uhuhreally wrote: post #16

this reminds me of that time blowhard Richard Dawkins disected an animal (can't remember which) and proceeded to bang on about how stupid the vagus nerve is, wandering all over the place as it does for no apparent reason. People used to say the same of the appendix and adenoids; that they're pointless vestiges, the blindness of evolution, contingent structures. Dawkins said obviously the nerve should simply connect d…

Are there any interesting theories? I think a lot can be attributed to just randomness. Some time in the evolutionary process we got infected by a bacteria, the mitochondria is now a vital part in our bodys energy system...

One of the nerves that go from the brain to the eye and is hooked by the top part of the aorta artery.

In the original version, it was in some animal like a fish, and the top part of the aorta was in the gills, so the way from the brain to the eye though the hole that is below the aorta was a straightforward path.

A few million years later, when we lost the gills, and got a neck, the top part of the aorta moved inside the chest to avoid a stupid long trip to the neck and back (and probably lost a lot of speed in the blood). The nerve was hooked, so the aorta got shorter, but the nerve has to go down to the chest, pass below the aorta, and then go back to the eye.

In the case of the giraffe, the trip to the chest and back to the eye is stupidly long.

The problem with evolution is that mutation can do only small changes (most big changes are just deadly). The connections of the nerve and the artery form very early in the development of the fetus, when it looks almost like an ugly fish. You can't unentangle the nerve and the artery later.

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve

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