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Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

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Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#131

Post by Retric »

hansvm wrote: post #123
Taek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are obvious cases where you are improving efficiency without eliminating slack. I'm not making my application more fragile by rewriting an n^2 operation over a large dataset to an n*log(n) operation that provides the same output. It's a win without tradeoffs. This type of example exists in all industries. For example, finding a new alloy that has strictly superior properties across all dimensions for a specific…

> I'm not making my application more fragile by rewriting an O(n^2) operation over a large dataset to an O(n log(n)) operation that provides the same output. It's a win without tradeoffs. Hopefully not nitpicking too much: it's a win without _many_ tradeoffs. E.g., in the usual places where you'd accidentally get an O(n^2) operation rather than O(n log(n)), the O(n^2) operation is constant-space. In a sufficiently an…

Plenty of n log n operations are in constant space. Average Quicksort performance being perhaps the classic example. But most often you see these kinds of improvements by simply removing steps. Net result is less code, less memory use age, less of everything.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#132

Post by richeyrw »

yt-sdb wrote: post #11
bschne wrote: post #2

I've found "efficiency as the opposite of stability" a very powerful concept to think about - even though it's fairly simple, it seems to be almost a fundamental law. Whether it's about the economy at large, your own household, a supply chain, what have you - as soon as you optimize for efficiency by removing friction, you take all the slack/damping out of the system and become instantly more liable to catastrophic f…

That's a nice way to think about, and it reminds me of Nassim Taleb's "antifragile" thesis [1]. Basically, the world is more random than you think, and to operate rationally under uncertainty, you need to be open-minded about opportunities and risks with huge asymmetries. Fragile systems are often very successful for a long time because they ignore hidden risks and then collapse due to the unexpected. [1] https://en.…

I wrote a post very much on this subject:

https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/03/27/the-fragility-of-effici...

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#134

Post by unilynx »

rdtwo wrote: post #109
mcguire wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than stability, think of it as robustness or flexibility. Past a certain point, efficiency is an enemy of robustness. Buying in bulk is cool. If you buy a big package of paper towels, it's cheaper and you don't have to worry about running out. The fact that you have a cabinet full of paper towels isn't a big deal. But suppose you find a really great deal on a semi-trailer load of towels and stock up. Now you h…

Just in time is synonymous with always late. Might work well with simple fungible goods but breaks down on complex stuff

complex stuff like building cars?

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#135

Post by 205guy »

alexpetralia wrote: post #4
bschne wrote: post #2

I've found "efficiency as the opposite of stability" a very powerful concept to think about - even though it's fairly simple, it seems to be almost a fundamental law. Whether it's about the economy at large, your own household, a supply chain, what have you - as soon as you optimize for efficiency by removing friction, you take all the slack/damping out of the system and become instantly more liable to catastrophic f…

I think this is probably better characterized as "efficiency erodes resilience". You can have stability if there are no perturbations. However, if there are, and you have optimized for a regime where there are not, you are very exposed to risk. This is pretty much Table's notion of antifragility as well as the study of resilience engineering.

> Table's notion of antifragility

sigh, someday we'll have auto-correct that just works. Doesn't even need to be AI, just use words in the current page. Heck just use contextual info such as the capitalization. Somebody, please?

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#136

Post by acd »

I think life is about having good experiences! That is why traveling and visiting new places and food is great, your mind gets to experience news things. Running around in 80 mph+ well you tend too miss things is my experience. Life is usually not about maximum efficiency unless you are a 100m sprint runner. Robots and programs can run as fast as they want and automation do us favors, however us humans should not strive to do the same.

Compare Junk food, you get full quickly, nutrients in junk food is usually bad. You can instead choose to have the experience of slowly cooking a nutritious meal. Eating slowly cooked food with your family and friends is often better. Usually stress comes with running around too fast so you tend to consume not healthy food and you then after a while gain weight. I am not saying consuming junk food, or running fast is bad every now and then but doing so all the time you might miss slower better experiences...

Same goes for buying local vs buying cheap stuff which does not last long. Often buying local is better for the environment.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#137

Post by mistermann »

mc32 wrote: post #106
bschne wrote: post #2

I've found "efficiency as the opposite of stability" a very powerful concept to think about - even though it's fairly simple, it seems to be almost a fundamental law. Whether it's about the economy at large, your own household, a supply chain, what have you - as soon as you optimize for efficiency by removing friction, you take all the slack/damping out of the system and become instantly more liable to catastrophic f…

Also in government. It’s really good that they are slow and inefficient (although it would be nicer if they were less wasteful). There is little worse than a very efficient government.

A very efficient singular planetary government (or, excessive international homogenization of approaches) seems like one plausible example.

To me, this very conversation is the approach we should be taking to the major problems du jour on the planet (treating it as an incredibly complex system with an infinite number of interacting variables, many of which we do not even know exist). But it seems as if once a system reaches a certain level of complexity, we lose the ability to even realize that it is in fact a complex system, and insist upon discussing it only in simplistic terms. Or maybe it's the fact that we are embedded within the system that makes it impossible to see.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#138

Post by dependsontheq »

roughly wrote: post #128
yt-sdb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice way to think about, and it reminds me of Nassim Taleb's "antifragile" thesis [1]. Basically, the world is more random than you think, and to operate rationally under uncertainty, you need to be open-minded about opportunities and risks with huge asymmetries. Fragile systems are often very successful for a long time because they ignore hidden risks and then collapse due to the unexpected. [1] https://en.…

> Fragile systems are often very successful for a long time because they ignore hidden risks and then collapse due to the unexpected. There's another interesting aspect to this in that things that are failures from some perspectives may not be from others. If stripping resiliency out of a company nets enough savings in the short term, it may still be profitable to the owners it even if it's long-term fatal. As a hypo…

Only if you define local interest as purely financially motivated. I am not even talking about the ethics, but even social status is not only dependent on wealth. We are much more than a bank account number, thinking that we are is more or less a pathological disease, because rationally it makes no sense.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#139

Post by indigochill »

roughly wrote: post #128
yt-sdb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice way to think about, and it reminds me of Nassim Taleb's "antifragile" thesis [1]. Basically, the world is more random than you think, and to operate rationally under uncertainty, you need to be open-minded about opportunities and risks with huge asymmetries. Fragile systems are often very successful for a long time because they ignore hidden risks and then collapse due to the unexpected. [1] https://en.…

> Fragile systems are often very successful for a long time because they ignore hidden risks and then collapse due to the unexpected. There's another interesting aspect to this in that things that are failures from some perspectives may not be from others. If stripping resiliency out of a company nets enough savings in the short term, it may still be profitable to the owners it even if it's long-term fatal. As a hypo…

Although I lean towards seeing killing the company as short-sighted, suppose you then invest that money back into a new venture. You have far more capital than you would have had you let the business remain healthy. This may give you even better value in the long-run (say 200 years) if you let this new venture live. But if you kill this venture too and invest its earnings into yet a third venture...

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#140

Post by rconti »

david_draco wrote: post #27

Insurance is the opposite of a lottery. If you think buying lottery tickets are a waste of money because you lose out in the long run, the same argument should lead you to think having insurance is a good thing.

Insurance premiums and the lottery both have expected negative returns.

I don't (generally) play the lottery, and I don't (generally) participate in involuntary insurance schemes.

I don't buy pet insurance, I don't buy extended warranties; I generally try to avoid paying a third party's payroll, G&A, real estate, taxes, and profits, all on top of the actual expenses I incur that they (hopefully) pay for, after much paperwork.

That said, I sure don't carry the bare minimums in auto or health or homeowners insurance because I cannot afford a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar unexpected expense.

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