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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

#261

Post by kovac »

kazinator wrote: post #107

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…

As the customer, it would be more efficient for me to receive what I need today than after one month. I think same day delivery is more about that than optimising a company's operations. They are selling efficiency to their customers.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#262

Post by roughly »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #243
roughly wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> companies forming and dissolving is fine for the investors but murder for the employees, who's livelihoods and health insurance become precarious 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…

Completely agree with this.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#263

Post by eecc »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #243
roughly wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> companies forming and dissolving is fine for the investors but murder for the employees, who's livelihoods and health insurance become precarious 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…

Yup, but that’s achieved via taxation, currently one of the costs that are being trimmed in the 19M/y example above... It’s a case of having your cake and eating it too

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#264

Post by xapata »

ianhorn wrote: post #246
BeatLeJuce wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. The b/v tradeoff is not the same thing. The efficiency of an estimator is a different from its bias.

> 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.

They're related in that less complex models will degrade more gracefully when making predictions on novel anomalies, and that in general model complexity drives the bias-variance trade-off.

But, erring on the side of efficiency in this discussion is more like over-fitting, which implies an overly complex model. It's making your model too good for one situation, such that it fails to generalize. You'd rather pull back on accuracy and choose a simpler model, in the hopes that it's more resilient to novel observations.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#265

Post by sidhu1f »

There was a time when GCC had to be installed by compiling from source. Doing so involved compiling the GCC source with the native compiler, and then using the resulting binary to compile the GCC source again.

I remember the install instructions advising "festina lente". The Latin phrase translates to "make haste slowly".

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#266

Post by ozim »

Taek wrote: post #46

This 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…

That is why kaizen is so nice because those are small improvements that you notice in daily operations.

The other one like bad efficiency I would just call "cost cutting measures" not efficiency improvements.

With kaizen you try to accommodate to what you have. So if Bob is slow cost cutting measure would be to fire him. Efficiency improvement way would be observing Bob to see what can be changed so you can get more value without messing him up.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#268

Post by eafkuor »

> We worship efficiency. Use less to get more. Same-day delivery. Multitask; text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a third. Efficiency is seen as good. Inefficiency as wasteful.

Is this a US thing? I've lived in three different European countries and nobody thinks this way. Efficiency and productivity are things I mostly just read about on HN.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#269

Post by rusty-rust »

eafkuor wrote: post #268

> We worship efficiency. Use less to get more. Same-day delivery. Multitask; text on one device while emailing on a second, and perhaps conversing on a third. Efficiency is seen as good. Inefficiency as wasteful. Is this a US thing? I've lived in three different European countries and nobody thinks this way. Efficiency and productivity are things I mostly just read about on HN.

I agree with your observation. From my observation Dutch startups live by the motto “steady wins the race” and to a larger extent I think it speaks to the risk aversion ingrained in their culture - both in their startup and VC mentalities.

They would rather bootstrap and grow with stability then pull a softbank and use/give massive capital injections in the hopes of getting market efficient domination.

Re: Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

#270

Post by b0rsuk »

Transcript of a Calvin&Hobbes strip:

Calvin's Dad, sitting at his desk: "It used to be that if a client wanted something done in a week, it was considered a rush job and he'd be lucky to get it."

CD: "Now, with modems, faxes, and car phones, everyone wants everything instantly! Improved technology just increases expectations."

CD: "These machines don't make life easier - they make life more harassed."

Calvin, in the background: "Six minutes to microwave this?? Who's got that kind of time?!"

CD: "If we wanted more leisure, we'd invent machines that do things less efficiently."

https://pics.me.me/it-used-to-be-that-if-a-non-with-modems-3...

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