241–250 of 314 posts
Having moved from an inefficient setting to an efficient environment, I have noticed a reduction of tolerance and threshold for getting stressed when things don't go smoothly. There is something to be said for the buffer that "inefficiency" provides.
There was a major one in the 20th century. It did not go well.
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…
Reminds me of Machiavelli’s comments on the French state (many small warlords) vs. the Ottoman state (single supreme leader.) The French state was less efficient, but more resilient and difficult to conquer, while the Ottoman state had more efficiency but was highly fragile. In some cases the old king of the conquered kingdom depended on his lords. 16th century France, or in other words France as it was at the time o…
Machiavelli is saying the opposite of what you think he's saying.
He's saying that France's governmental structure makes it (relatively) easy to conquer. Because there are many quasi-independent, competing fiefs, an invader is not necessarily facing a unified front, and may in fact be able to recruit dissatisfied lords to their cause. But that doesn't make it the kind of place you'd want to rule, because once you've conquered it, it's (relatively) easy for another invader to conquer you for the same reasons.
In contrast, there were no fiefdoms in Persia. Unlike the lords in France, the regional rulers in Persia were chosen by the state, and picked for their loyalty. When invading Persia, you are far more likely to face a united front, making it (relatively) difficult to conquer. That said, once you've conquered it, it would be (relatively) easy to hold for the same reasons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Right - and I think that's generally what you'd see people doing. I'm not even sure it's necessarily an intrinsically bad pattern - there can be short-term opportunities and circumstances that make a strategy worthwhile for a number of years but not further. I think the issue broadly is twofold. First is the collateral damage - companies forming and dissolving is fine for the investors but murder for the employees, w…
That's a problem with the social safety net, not a problem with companies failing.
A lot of companies are going to fail even without someone actively trying to drive them out of business.
Some industries just have collapses in demand and no longer do something that anyone wants. Some companies are just mismanaged.
We need to provide support for the employees who are victims of companies collapsing, not try to prevent any company from ever collapsing.
Same-day delivery isn't efficiency; it's made possible by inefficiency, like using more delivery people and vehicles who cover inefficient routes, and using more warehouses closer to delivery areas. Actually we can't discuss efficiency without making it clear what parameter we are optimizing, at the cost of what (if any) other parameters. However, usually, if we reduce the time something takes not by cleverly elimina…
Right. Same-day delivery is fast , not usually efficient. Neither is multitasking using three different devices at the same time efficient. Again in this example the author seems to be confusing rush with efficiency. I didn't make it past those first few incoherent lines, so I don't know whether this confusion persists into the rest of the article.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's called bias vs. variance tradeoff, or over-fitting, in stats/machine learning lingo.
No, it isn't. The b/v tradeoff is not the same thing. The efficiency of an estimator is a different from its bias.
I think the comment is drawing a parallel to variance (better efficiency = lower variance). Still not exactly the same, I think, but pretty damn similar.
I think this article is missing something. What it talks about is efficiency of systems, which I think is different than efficiency in process. Most of what the article talks about is making large systems more efficient for the benefit of the system at large. I agree, this makes individual components of the system more stressed and prone to catastrophic failure at any one point in the system. People within that kind…
The first word of the essay is "we," and it goes downhill from there.
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…
This isn’t really too correct. A lot of things are neither stable nor efficient.
Yes, and those are the shitty things.
But when you want to improve them, make them non-shitty, you're facing a choice: stability, or high performance - pick one.
You are going to have more time to do anything, relax, think, clean, whatever.
Why would spending more time putting on shoes be better?