It’s telling that ancient philosophers didn’t include many of the things we value in our hyper-corporate society in their definitions of a good life. Leisure (N.B. not entertainment) is dead in America, and it has significant consequences. I wish it weren’t the case, but I really do find that I do my best thinking when I give myself time to do nothing or go for an aimless walk. Efficiency as a virtue should be reserved for machines, not human beings.
Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
251–260 of 314 posts
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#252This comment thread is making me realize we don't have a good word to distinguish between efficiency as in "we only have 7 hospital beds because that's all we need on 99% of each day" and efficiency as in "we replaced steps X,Y,Z with just step X', because we found that X' could accomplish everything that XYZ could accomplish but it's faster, more accurate, and cheaper". One makes a tradeoff by reducing overheads and…
This seems like it sort of ties in with NN Taleb's idea of "Anti-fragile" [1]. Perhaps also Chesterton's fence [2]. Maybe also the whole premature-optimization thing [3]. And of course the too-clever-by-half coyotes [4]. Really maybe it just comes down to "be wary of making changes that reduce resiliency." I was hoping to come up with something cohesive with this comment, but really I guess I just agree with what you…
epsilontheory.com
I love every article I have read so far. It's really expanding me. Thanks for sharing.
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#253This article is badly mid-attributing why these systems are 'efficient' in the way they are.
The lessons in the '08 crisis were crystal clear - anyone who planned for difficult times and left a contingency lost out. Then look at 2020 - one of the first thing the US government did was bail out the financial system. Bailing out banks is almost a pavlovian response at this point.
That is why there is no robustness built in; because the capitalists have correctly identified that the they will not be allowed to go broke. Businesses are optimising based on an expected government response. What use is contingency planning when the contingency isn't allowed to eventuate? Excessively risky ventures are promoted in the good time and buffered in the bad.
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The French state was less efficient, but more resilient and difficult to conquer, while the Ottoman state had more efficiency but was highly fragile. 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, a…
French states are not easy to conquer, they are easy to enter, for the reasons you’ve stated.
Otherwise, we are saying the same thing.
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#255I'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…
Following this mindset, blockchain can be described as low efficiency and high stability?
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The French state was less efficient, but more resilient and difficult to conquer, while the Ottoman state had more efficiency but was highly fragile. 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, a…
French states are not easy to conquer, they are easy to enter , for the reasons you’ve stated. Otherwise, we are saying the same thing.
So France was its own Vietnam. Fitting.
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#257Can someone explain what this means?
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#258I'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…
> efficiency as the opposite of stability In statistics, there is a slight variant of this thesis that is true in a precise formal sense: the tradeoff between efficiency and "robustness" (stability in a non-ideal situation). For example, if you have a population sample, the most efficient way to estimate the population mean from your sample is the sample mean. But if some of the data are corrupted, you're better off…
Another example would be forward error correction (adding parity bits to improve robustness at the expense of efficiency).
But inefficiency isn't necessarally more robust unless the extra bits serve some purpose.
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#259I'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…
Following this mindset, blockchain can be described as low efficiency and high stability?
There's always someone making weird correlations between Blockchain/Cryptocurrency and some random idea.
Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better
#260Of course not trying cram as much in as possible makes life better. However tell that to a CEO who has built a business off an unsustainable, for a normal person who wants to have a life outside of work, efficiency mindset.
The CEO gets it from above. Investors want to hold a portfolio with a particular risk/return profile. In order to do that, the individual components of the portfolio need to be running at higher risk, higher return profiles.
(Portfolio theory is why I am in favour of social safety nets. A worker wishes a relatively safe risk/return profile will voluntarily choose a much higher risk job when they can combine it with a low-risk backstop.)