Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

sohl-dickstein.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 377 posts

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#141

Post by appendix-rock »

gond wrote: post #134

“Though this pheonomenon is often discussed, it doesn't seem to be named. Let's call it the strong version of Goodhart's law“ I wonder why the author called it that way when this seems to me clearly derived from Ross Ashby‘s law of Requisite Variet[1], predating Goodhard by 20 years. As I see it, it is not even necessary to put more meaning it Goodhard as there actually is. Requisite Variety is sufficient. Going by h…

Love myself some cybernetics! All engineers are doing themselves a disservice by sitting here writing smooth-brained rants about “dumb MBAs making my job hard” instead of reading up on this field and understanding the true complexities that are inherent in people working together.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#142

Post by appendix-rock »

remram wrote: post #24

Those are great points! Another related law is from queuing theory: waiting time goes to infinity when utilization approaches 100%. You need your processes/machines/engineers to have some slack otherwise some tasks will wait forever.

For some it may go without saying, but for the uninitiated, y’all should be reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#143

Post by appendix-rock »

naitgacem wrote: post #125

Upon reading the title at first glance, I thought this was going to be how "effecient" computers nowadays. Such as MacBooks and such, who started this efficient computers thing in the recent times. And they are, but as a result computers are all worse off for it. I mean soldered RAMs and everything is a system on a chip.

That wouldn’t be worthy of the front page of HN. “I don’t like the current tradeoffs that laptop manufacturers make” has been talked through to absolute death. It’s the opposite of interesting.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#144

Post by onethought »

netcan wrote: post #104
t_mann wrote: post #86

The argument rides on the well-known Goodhart's law ( when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure ). However, it only puts it down to measurement problems, as in, we can't measure the things we really care about, so we optimize some proxies. That, in my view, is a far too reductionist view of the problem. The problem isn't just about measurement, it's about human behavior. Unlike particles, humans…

This is true, these "laws" are approximations and imperfect reductions. Which one is useful or descriptive will depend on the specific example. Optimizing ML VS Optimizing a social media algorithm VS using standardized testing to optimize education systems. There is no perfect abstraction that applies to these different scenarios precisely. We don't need that precision. We just need the subsequent intuition about whe…

I missed the citation on his education point. Has someone proved that “teaching to the test” leads to lower educational outcomes than not having tests?

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#145

Post by 082349872349872 »

eru wrote: post #62
georgeburdell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I used to work in a factory. Target utilization at planning time was 80%. If you over-predict your utilization, you waste money. If you under-predict, a giant queue of “not important” stuff starts to develop

For some scenarios that's fine, and you can slash the queue whenever necessary. Eg at Google (this was ten years ago or so), we could always spend leftover networking capacity on syncing a tiny bit faster and more often between our data centres. And that would improve users' experience slightly, but it also not something that builds up a backlog. At a factory, you could always have some idle workers swipe the floor a…

Unlike merchantmen, naval vessels were crewed at a level allowing for substantial attrition (bad attrition would be casualties; good attrition would be prize crews); I believe they traditionally (pace Churchill) had many, many activities which were incidental to force projection (eg polishing the brightwork) but could be used to occupy all hands.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#147

Post by soulofmischief »

jfim wrote: post #129
tablatom wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting timing for me! Just a couple of days ago I discovered the work of biologist Olivier Hamant who has been raising exactly this issue. His main thesis is that very high performance (which he defines as efficacy towards a known goal plus efficiency) and very high robustness (the ability to withstand large fluctuations in the system) are physically incompatible. Examples abound in nature. Contrary to common pe…

We've seen this during the COVID pandemic supply chain disruptions as well, where just in time supply chain management doesn't work as expected when operating in an abnormal environment.

I'd always thought this conclusion was just a given.

Highly optimized systems take full advantage of their environment and rely on a high degree of predictability in order to avoid redundant operations.

These systems minimize the free energy in the system, and so very little free energy is available to counteract new forces introduced to the environment which act on the system.

You'll find parallels in countless domains, since the very basis for learning and stabilization of a system revolves around becoming more or less sensitive to a given stimulus. Examples could be attention, supply chain economics, institutions, etc.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#148

Post by LUmBULtERA »

Tade0 wrote: post #139
lynguist wrote: post #137

I would claim in a completely informal way that the optimal degree of utilization is ln(2)=0.693, around 70%. This stems from the optimal load of self-balancing trees. A little bit of slack is always useful to deal with the unforeseen. And even a lot of slack is useful (though not always as it is costly) as it enables to do things that a dedicated resource cannot do. On the other hand, no slack at all (so running at…

I would put it at 1 - e^(-1) ~= 0.6321 As e^x is a commonly occurring curve and at that point its derivative goes below 1, meaning from that point on it's diminishing returns.

I was thinking how this string of thought could connect to our daily lives. As a family with a toddler, if we fill up too much of our schedule/time in a day, a perturbation to the schedule can break everything. If instead we fill up 63-70% of the schedule and build in Flex Time, we're good!

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#149

Post by yannis »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #99
vishnugupta wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that a 100% efficient system is not resilient. Even minor disruptions in subsystems lead to major breakdowns. There’s no room to absorb shocks. We saw a drastic version of this during COVID-19 induced supply chain collapse. Car manufacturers had built near 100% just in time manufacturing that they couldn’t absorb chip shortages and it took them years to get back up. It also leaves no room for experimentation.…

This is coincides with my headcannon cause of the business cycle. 1. Firms compete 2. Firms either increase their efficiency or die 3. Efficient firms are more susceptible to shocks 4. Firm shutdown and closures are themselves shocks 5. Eventually the system reaches a critical point where the aggregate susceptibility is higher than the aggregate of shocks that will be generated by shutdowns and closures 6. Any extern…

Good analysis, but one also needs to look at the definition of `efficiency`, what is your definition of efficiency in this context.
Post reply on HN