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Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

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Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#311

Post by rootusrootus »

bob1029 wrote: post #187
netcan wrote: post #176

Another example of this approximate law is in exercise physiology. To a normal person, there are a lot of good proxy indicators of fitness. You could train sprinting. You could hop up and down. Squat. Clean and jerk.. etc. Running faster,hopping higher, squatting heavier... all indicators of increasing fitness... and success of your fitness training. Two points: 1 - The more general your training methodology, the mor…

Clean & jerk is one of those movements that I would almost consider "complete". Especially if you are going to mix in variants of the squat. Not sure these are the best example. I don't know of anyone who can C&J more than their body weight for multiple repetitions who isn't also an absolute terminator at most other meaningful aspects of human fitness. Human body is one machine. Hormonal responses are global. Enduran…

IMO deadlift is another good one. If you could only do a single lift, I think you could make a pretty good case that it should be deadlift. Works damn near every muscle in your body, and gets your heart going pretty good too.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#312

Post by mch82 »

Really interesting to learn about the ML perspective of the cost of localized efficiency. Local efficiency can also make things worse from a queueing theory perspective. Optimizing a process step that feeds a system bottleneck can cause queues to pile up, decreasing system-level productivity. Automating production of waste forces downstream processes to deal with added waste.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#313

Post by phainopepla2 »

Edman274 wrote: post #282
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…

> Unlike particles, humans will actively seek to exploit any control system you've set up. Well, agents will. If you created a genetic algorithm for an AI agent whose reward function was the amount of dead cobras it got from Delhi, I feel like you'd quickly find that the best performing agent was the one that started breeding cobras. In the human case and in the AI case the reward function has been hacked. In the AI…

We have good reason to treat the humans as sneaky in your example, because they understand the spirit of the control system, and exploit the letter of it. The AI only understands the letter.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#314

Post by LorenPechtel »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #213
wongarsu wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That solution is never going to work when black swan events occur on the order of every 5-10 years and executive vision is focused on the next quarter with little concern paid to anything outside the next 2-3 years. Nobody is going to want to give up short term performance to mitigate risks that probably won't manifest until after they've left for a better job.

Yeah, that's the real problem. Too much efficiency in the short term.

My idea on working around this: for any business with actively traded stock there is a salary cap, say $1m/yr *per year*. You want to pay that guy $10m/yr? No, you pay him $1m and he gets 9 sets of shares that are worth $1m now, but they will be delivered one a year. Next year, same thing, you give him $1m, one set of shares from the previous year is delivered to him, he's got 9 new sets coming. So long as you have such shares forthcoming you are not permitted to engage in any trade where you would gain from the stock going down. If you do so inadvertently (say, investing in a fund that shorts the stock) any income from that is taxed at 100%.

The idea is to make your top people care about the long term prospects of the company, not merely the prospects of their area for whatever time they're in charge of it.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#315

Post by lukeschlather »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #269
CuriouslyC wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That solution is never going to work when black swan events occur on the order of every 5-10 years and executive vision is focused on the next quarter with little concern paid to anything outside the next 2-3 years. Nobody is going to want to give up short term performance to mitigate risks that probably won't manifest until after they've left for a better job.

Businesses won't plan long term or for black swan events if they don't have to; it is rational not to if they know a bailout is coming.

Businesses won't plan for black swan events when the people operating them have other sufficient wealth that the death of the company doesn't pose a serious problem for them. When CEOs make enough in a year to retire, there's no need to to worry about a potential catastrophic failure next year.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#316

Post by RandomLensman »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #307
RandomLensman wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialized healthcare seems to kind of work in many developed economies - where does it struggle and by what metrics regarding the health outcomes?

I would love to see a good proof that it works, all the discussions, rumors and anecdotal evidence suggest the contrary. I am open to learn the truth, with hard numbers. Very long waiting times are the first thing that comes to mind regarding such failures, with UK and Canada at the top spot. It is not uncommon to die waiting for a consultation to be diagnosed in 1-2 years.

I don't think you'd see that kind of waiting times in Germany, for example (but Germnay also is at the high end of healthcare as %GDP).

Edit: I would also add that it is probably better to look at health outcomes, e.g., survival rates for cancer.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#317

Post by LorenPechtel »

WalterBright wrote: post #173
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…

The usual cycle for business in a free market is it appears young and fresh, lacking any parasites. It grows rapidly, displacing existing mature businesses. Then, it accumulates bureaucracy and parasites, becoming less and less efficient, strangled by bloat and inability to adapt, and slides into bankruptcy, replaced by the next generation of new businesses. The remains of the business are then reallocated to the nex…

Not just government agencies. Everybody wants their finger in the pie to justify their job. And every politician wants to do things their voters like.

I'm thinking of a reasonably recent article I saw that was talking about helping people navigate the 30+ assistance programs they might be eligible for. There's your problem right there--there should not be 30+ programs doing approximately the same thing! That's an awful lot of duplication of effort.

Or look at what happens with business licenses. Two things I see:

1) They want their $ from entities that shouldn't really be "businesses" in the first place. Around here an awful lot of licensed professionals have to have a "business" license--never mind that the nature of their work means they're inside some other entity that actually is reasonable to license. And that means a sales tax registration which has an annual minimum that such people almost certainly will never reach. (Sales tax includes use tax--but it's their office that actually engages in such transactions.)

2) Businesses that perform their work on-site have to have business licenses for every license area of the metropolitan area they work in. Hey, guys, get together and define the superset of the rules of your area and allow someone to get a license that covers the whole area based on that superset.

The Republicans are "right" in that we have far too many regulations. But they are very wrong in wanting to take an axe to them--most of the rules are individually sensible (and when they produce nonsense it's often situations where it's not worthwhile to special case), there is a horrible problem of duplication of effort and fingers in the pie. It's not chopping that's needed, it's organization.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#318

Post by gond »

pradn wrote: post #221
gond wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I wonder if this is still the aftermath of the chasm which resulted when ‘Marvin Minsky et al‚ disowned Cybernetics, took some parts out of it and gave it a shiny new name. Especially Systems Theory in its second manifestation (Maturana, Luhmann, von Förster, Glasersfeld - and Ackoff) is extremely powerful, deep and, reasons beyond me, totally overlooked. Have to say tho, most MBA‘s I encountered sadly never…

How has Systems Theory changed how you think? Is there a good book you recommend on the topic? Thank you!

I made a mistake here, leading astray. It's second-order cybernetics, not second order systems theory. I melted the two in my head, reason is that (Social) Systems Theory according to Niklas Luhmann [1] incorporates several parts of second order cybernetics (most of the people mentioned before show up there) and blends it all together to a point where I have difficulties to distinguish the separate parts.

This is all not 'new' in the literal sense. Luhmann died in the late 90s. I tried to come up with a spot-on-book of Luhmann, but that lead to nothing. It's all spread out (papers and books) as far as I know. There is a (transcribed) lecture given in 1992, which may come close, but I couldn't find a translated version of it.

One of the parts which hit home for me was the introduction of a differenciated form of distinctiveness, in turn partly enabled by the introduction of an observer, and observation in general. Heinz von Foerster gave an often cited sentence which I think fits the part, albeit Luhmann gurus will probably moan my simplification : "Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer."

Apart from that, sorry for not being more helpful here.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklas_Luhmann

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#319

Post by LorenPechtel »

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.

It's not just Covid. Look at the medical world. Generic products compete on price and there is little profit margin--not enough to warrant overprovisioning against problems. And meeting FDA requirements for new activities means new players can't just jump in the game. (And we sometimes see this done maliciously--control all active production of something and shove the price through the roof.) One factory has a problem and there can be huge problems downstream as a result.

The only solution I see is for the FDA to include supply reliability in it's determination of whether a system is acceptable.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#320

Post by LorenPechtel »

nradov wrote: post #217
bumby wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

And yet most large merchant ships are designed with a single engine, propeller, and rudder to optimize for cost instead of reliability. We have seen some spectacular failures of that approach recently, although it probably still makes sense in aggregate. A major mechanical casualty beyond what the crew can repair usually means a tow to a shipyard. Flying more engineers in by helicopter would seldom help, and often is…

The bridge that collapsed wasn't due to a single engine, propeller or rudder. It was due to a single electrical system. One intermittent electrical issue left the ship basically helpless even though all propulsion and steering was undamaged.
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