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Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

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Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#191

Post by ghaff »

fireflash38 wrote: post #175
vlovich123 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s smart to proactively back track without being very careful. One thing that’s needed is for corporate death to be allowed to occur. Right now the downsides of risky behavior is bailed out for large enough risk. Then the companies that fail aren’t robust and the ones that don’t are but bailouts let non robust companies keep going. Otherwise “robustness” is a property without a measure which means tha…

One of the primary reasons people bail out companies are the knock-on effects. People losing jobs, etc. If society itself is robust enough to cover for people in those situations, we could let companies fail far more.

There's a sentiment on here often that, even if a company has been essentially blown up by technology or market change, they should have transformed themselves to adapt. But that implies they probably needed to rototill their workforce in any case. At some point, you're probably better off just declaring bankruptcy and starting fresh or letting someone else do so.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#192

Post by wongarsu »

vlovich123 wrote: post #170
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…

I don’t think it’s smart to proactively back track without being very careful. One thing that’s needed is for corporate death to be allowed to occur. Right now the downsides of risky behavior is bailed out for large enough risk. Then the companies that fail aren’t robust and the ones that don’t are but bailouts let non robust companies keep going. Otherwise “robustness” is a property without a measure which means tha…

In a free market economy we shouldn't demand robustness, we should create a system that promotes and rewards robustness. A strict commitment against bail-outs would certainly be part of that. Companies (and private people) can decide to lower their risk exposure (at the cost of efficiency/profit) or take out insurance against risks. And if they go the insurance route they have to assess how likely their insurance is to go insolvent at the next insurance event. That's how you reward those that are actually resilient.

Healthcare is more complicated. It can never work as an efficient free market since nobody goes comparison shopping for the hospital with the best value-for-money when they have a car crash. That's why socialized healthcare achieves much better results per dollar spent. But it's often hamstrung by attempts at efficiency.

I think a better societal example is disaster relief: helping people back up after they have been hit by a hurricane is the humane thing to do, but how much is that encouraging people to settle in high risk areas with insufficient precautions?

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#193

Post by whatshisface »

wongarsu wrote: post #192
vlovich123 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s smart to proactively back track without being very careful. One thing that’s needed is for corporate death to be allowed to occur. Right now the downsides of risky behavior is bailed out for large enough risk. Then the companies that fail aren’t robust and the ones that don’t are but bailouts let non robust companies keep going. Otherwise “robustness” is a property without a measure which means tha…

In a free market economy we shouldn't demand robustness, we should create a system that promotes and rewards robustness. A strict commitment against bail-outs would certainly be part of that. Companies (and private people) can decide to lower their risk exposure (at the cost of efficiency/profit) or take out insurance against risks. And if they go the insurance route they have to assess how likely their insurance is…

I don't see why people can't comparisons shop for hospitals before they get in a car crash. Unless I am literally unconscious I would go to the hospital in my area that I trust the most, and I have plans for which urgent care, clinics and hospitals I would take someone else to if they needed a driver.

In fact I think a pretty small fraction of patients arrive at the ER unconscious.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#194

Post by mgfist »

nerdponx wrote: post #100
Jensson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The efficiency results in abundance not possible in less dense areas, you are waiting for things that are simply not available elsewhere.

Sort of. Compare doing laundry at the laundromat to doing laundry in your basement.

They meant things like bars, restaurants, sports stadiums, concerts, plays. Things that require sufficient density to make economic sense.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#195

Post by bumby »

tablatom wrote: post #98
refibrillator wrote: post #55

I recognize the author Jascha as an incredibly brilliant ML researcher, formerly at Google Brain and now at Anthropic. Among his notable accomplishments, he and coauthors mathematically characterized the propagation of signals through deep neural networks via techniques from physics and statistics (mean field and free probability theory). Leading to arguably some of the most profound yet under-appreciated theoretical…

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…

There are also a lot of engineering examples where the goal is to optimize for reliability. I think the most common domain is marine platforms where it is prohibitively expensive to induct and repair (you have to send a team out by helicopter, for example).

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#197

Post by bilsbie »

This is why I don’t like focusing on GDP. I think a quarterly poll on life satisfaction and optimism would be a better measure.

If you’re curious about GDP. I my car breaks and I get it fixed, that adds to GDP.

If a parent stays home to raise kids, that lowers GDP. If I clean my own house that lowers GDP. Etc.

Unemployment is another crude metric. Are these jobs people want or do they feel forced to work bad jobs.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#198

Post by 3abiton »

tablatom wrote: post #98
refibrillator wrote: post #55

I recognize the author Jascha as an incredibly brilliant ML researcher, formerly at Google Brain and now at Anthropic. Among his notable accomplishments, he and coauthors mathematically characterized the propagation of signals through deep neural networks via techniques from physics and statistics (mean field and free probability theory). Leading to arguably some of the most profound yet under-appreciated theoretical…

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…

The acceleration of knowledge is producing so much content, real gems are passing by unnoticed. Thanks for pitching in!

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#199

Post by bumby »

wongarsu wrote: post #192
vlovich123 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s smart to proactively back track without being very careful. One thing that’s needed is for corporate death to be allowed to occur. Right now the downsides of risky behavior is bailed out for large enough risk. Then the companies that fail aren’t robust and the ones that don’t are but bailouts let non robust companies keep going. Otherwise “robustness” is a property without a measure which means tha…

In a free market economy we shouldn't demand robustness, we should create a system that promotes and rewards robustness. A strict commitment against bail-outs would certainly be part of that. Companies (and private people) can decide to lower their risk exposure (at the cost of efficiency/profit) or take out insurance against risks. And if they go the insurance route they have to assess how likely their insurance is…

>private people) can decide to lower their risk exposure

I think the complexities of modern societies make it too difficult to measure this risk adequately. We just don’t have the bandwidth to think about the second-and-third order effects for every social/financial interaction we encounter. And people are generally very poor at estimating high-consequence/low-probability events. This means people will often take very outsized risks without realizing it; when bad things happen it creates an unstable society. I don’t think we’ve evolved to personally manage all the c risks in a large complex society and farming those risks out to institutions seems to be the current way most societies have decided to mitigate those risks.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#200

Post by r3d0c »

llm_trw wrote: post #168
bmicraft wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to put it so bluntly, but you're basically saying: "I don't care it the climate's fucked, I want to live away from civilization and drive 100 miles a day everywhere" Of course we shouldn't hyper-optimize everything, but sooner people realize our environment depends on not everyone getting exactly what they want whenever they want the better. Living in a (walkable) city is just one such concession towards the en…

If you think cities don't fuck the climate just as much as suburbs do I have a well you can carry water 40 flights of stairs from.

cities do because they exist in a system that generate carbon, but they are vastly more resource & carbon efficient than suburbs per person

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/01/06/suburban-sprawl-cancels...

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