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Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

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Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#21

Post by AlbertCory »

srean wrote: post #17
ngvrnd wrote: post #6

Ultimately, pursuit of perfect efficiency results in crystalline systems which are fragile. Slack is the ur-antifragility. (efficiency pursued for itself is AN enemy)

That's because the risk of fragility is typically not priced in. If risks werent treated as an externality this failure mode would be taken care of. Of course some unanticipated failure modes would always come and surprise us. I would be one happy person if the failures we see around us were all of this 'inconceivable' variety. Very few are, except when one buries one head in the sand and refuses to consider the fair…

The "risk of fragility" is bankruptcy, or death if we're talking about a biological organism.

For example, the financial entity that makes tons of money speculating in a worthless asset, then goes belly up when its worthlessness is exposed (I won't name the asset(s) to avoid a flame war).

You can't "price that in." You just avoid it.

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#22

Post by oicU00 »

pdonis wrote: post #4

The article's central illustration actually contradicts the claimed point. In the illustration, the secretary, Gloria, has slack, but the purpose her slack serves is not to enable change, which is basically what the article claims slack is for. Gloria's slack is just to make sure that Tony, the CEO, doesn't have any slack: he's working all the time on whatever he thinks is highest priority, and never takes a break. A…

If the roles are both equally necessary, why does the CEO make so much more than the secretary?

The CEOs entire enterprise is due to others. If anything explicitly highlighting that undermines the myth they’re the experts.

Both of your models rely on the CEO delegating to focus on the right state change for the business, so I’m not sure why you create two scenarios with squishy ideas of a CEO being efficient or slacking. Some CEOs have casual demeanors, others addiction to Adderall energy; neither is slacking if that’s just the vibe they need to “make it better.”

You seem to be circling the core meme it’s the CEOs job to improve the company and wrapping it up in subjective modals for doing so. Not sure how this refutes the article.

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#23

Post by michael1999 »

dgan wrote: post #9

I guess like optimizing for throughtput != optimizing for latency

The real enemy is optimizing for utilization which people think is the same as optimizing for throughput. Anti-slack is exactly this error.

Optimizing for latency will often improve system throughput, and maximum throughput almost never shows 100% utilization.

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#24

Post by [deleted] »

WJW wrote: post #11
tinalumfoil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Tony necessarily has to be working at full efficiency for this. Say Tony is taking a break when he gets a text from support, "Big Client X is really unhappy, looking for your help on this". He texts Gloria, "grab me previous interactions with X". Maybe he needs financial info that Gloria doesn't have a record of. "Dan, Tony needs to know Y, send me the info?". A chain like this could easily form a graph…

It always reminds me of a fire brigade or an army. You want the firefighters to have lots of slack so that they will be available when there is a fire. On the other hand, having people sitting around "being ready" is costly and there is some optimum amount you need.

[deleted]

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#25

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

andrewla wrote: post #16

Related to the concept of efficiency / slack is the concept of a Moral Maze (from Robert Jackall) [1] or Immoral Maze (the same thing but renamed for clarity) [2]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199729883 [2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zpA2Tnp2k38qSmr8J/how-to-ide...

I'm not sure how Moral Mazes relates to this topic, can you explain the links to me a little bit more?

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#26

Post by mikkergp »

dqpb wrote: post #8

The author is confusing efficiency with utilization.

Yeah I see the criticisms of efficiency brought up alot lately it’s click bait. Efficiency is always good. efficiency is the percent of time I spend on the hobby(practicing piano) rather than shuffling books around or making my space comfortable. Not maximizing the hours of my day spent “productively”.

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#27

Post by srean »

AlbertCory wrote: post #21
srean wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the risk of fragility is typically not priced in. If risks werent treated as an externality this failure mode would be taken care of. Of course some unanticipated failure modes would always come and surprise us. I would be one happy person if the failures we see around us were all of this 'inconceivable' variety. Very few are, except when one buries one head in the sand and refuses to consider the fair…

The "risk of fragility" is bankruptcy, or death if we're talking about a biological organism. For example, the financial entity that makes tons of money speculating in a worthless asset, then goes belly up when its worthlessness is exposed (I won't name the asset(s) to avoid a flame war). You can't "price that in." You just avoid it.

One sure can, by engineering a more robust system. This will cost you some though. One can buy insurance, one can make tail hedges. The right mix of mitigation strategies depends on the nature of the threat.

Avoiding it falls in the same spectrum. It is equivalent to assigning an infinite cost to the risk .

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#28

Post by Retric »

WJW wrote: post #11
tinalumfoil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Tony necessarily has to be working at full efficiency for this. Say Tony is taking a break when he gets a text from support, "Big Client X is really unhappy, looking for your help on this". He texts Gloria, "grab me previous interactions with X". Maybe he needs financial info that Gloria doesn't have a record of. "Dan, Tony needs to know Y, send me the info?". A chain like this could easily form a graph…

It always reminds me of a fire brigade or an army. You want the firefighters to have lots of slack so that they will be available when there is a fire. On the other hand, having people sitting around "being ready" is costly and there is some optimum amount you need.

The timescale makes a huge difference here. Firefighters need to be next to their equipment to respond to an emergency. US army reservists “One Weekend a Month, Two Weeks a Year” is understating things, but they can hold down a full time job when not called up.

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#29

Post by bumby »

Slack is great for resiliency, but it obviously can't be unbounded. The CEO in the article can't have 100 secretaries just in case. One of the great things about approaches like linear programming (programming in the sense of industrial engineering and not CS) is that it helps quantify how much that slack is worth. It can then be put into context of whether the risk tradeoff is worth the extra slack.

Re: Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)

#30

Post by bumby »

Jtsummers wrote: post #12
petercooper wrote: post #3

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) a bit.

Probably because that's pretty much the introductory chapter(s) (been a few years since I read it, but the topic comes up very early). Running everything at full capacity even when they can't do meaningful work for the sake of "efficiency" is a great way to accomplish a lot of wasted effort. It can go in several directions: 1. You have a lot of wasted work. You're making 100 widgets/hour that the next station can onl…

Isn't the example in your last paragraph more about specialization than cutting out slack?

It seems to me like they misunderstood the value stream. The specialized added value by reducing the average administrative overhead of the engineers, which enabled the engineers to focus more on where they add the most value to the system. Not unlike the secretary and CEO in the article.

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