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Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

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Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#361

Post by xorcist »

bumby wrote: post #199
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…

> 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 ve…

It also doesn't strike me as very fair. If you smoke, should you not receive cancer care because you took unnecessary risk?

I can see how you could arrive at similar conclusions from a risk management perspective, but it's not a morally just system. Within the system risk taking must be accepted.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#362

Post by collingreen »

kortilla wrote: post #340
collingreen wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "zero fucks given by the government" do you mean the government got involved, effectively bought the bank, and took responsibility for 100% of deposits (most of which were the balances of startups, ie venture capital investments)?

Nope, shareholders got wiped out and the bank was done as a bank. What you’re thinking of is FDIC which is completely the opposite of a bailout for the bank. It’s a bailout for depositors (a huge portion of which were normal people). Arguments for the FDIC protecting people from keeping money in bad banks is a different argument, but it most certainly isn’t a bailout. If you think going bankrupt and the FDIC seizing…

I didn't say bailout. You said the government gave zero fucks but I think it actually went way above and beyond the normal FDIC insurance to make sure ALL depositors were made whole not just up to the normal 250k.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#363

Post by eru »

its_bbq wrote: post #355
eru wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same happened with Walkmans or desktop computer, or mobile phones etc. It's pretty normal that people want less of stuff when it's expensive, and more when it's cheap.

I mean I'm general, I'd rather buy fewer of the same things no matter if it's cheap or expensive if I didn't have to, and it would use less resources. Juicing someone's quarterly sales report is no good reason for me to buy a refrigerator, yet here we are.

Oh, you would already have other reasons to buy a fridge. They are really useful to keep things cool, and thus keep your food and drink from spoiling.

But (in our example) the high price of a fridge has so far kept you from buying one. Luckily, prices have recently been falling, so you can finally afford one.

You look forward to a new era of less spoilage and less food waste in your life; because you'd rather use less resources. (The electricity to be burned by the new fridge comes from your rooftop photovoltaic, of course.)

---

Does this make sense? You need have no regard for anyone's quarterly sales reports.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#364

Post by [deleted] »

layer8 wrote: post #188
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. But that’s only possible because the control system doesn’t exactly (and only) control what we want it to control. The control system is only an imperfect proxy for what we really want, in a very similar way as the measure in Goodhart’s law. Another variation of that is the law of unintended consequences [0]. There is probably…

[deleted]

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#365

Post by 2grue »

This is super interesting. The author states "the strong version of Goodhart's law" as a fact, but does not provide a theorem which shows that it is true. This recent paper does the job.[0] The authors write about Goodhart's law in the context of AI alignment but they are clear that their theorem is much more broadly applicable:

> we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which indefinitely optimizing for any incomplete proxy objective leads to arbitrarily low overall utility

> Our main result identifies conditions such that any misalignment is costly: starting from any initial state, optimizing any fixed incomplete proxy eventually leads the principal to be arbitrarily worse off.

[0]: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2020/hash/b607ba543ad05...

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#366

Post by soyeahok »

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…

[dead]

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#367

Post by Adrox »

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.

What do you wanna good proof of? Life expectancy? What population health metrics do you want?

Almost all EU countries with socialized healthcare beat US and even UK. Canada is more near EU level.

Do you also want US anedoctal evidence? What’s the consultation time for diagnose in the US for people without insurance/ insurance doesn’t cover/insurance says it doesn’t cover/no money?? Never? How does that affect the average/mean?

Life Expectancy:

Italy 83.7; Spain 83.7; France 83.3; Sweden 83.3; Canada 82.6; Portugal 82.4; Germany 81.4; United Kingdom 81.3; United States 79.3; Poland 78.6;

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-unwpp?tab...

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#368

Post by ksec »

whizzter wrote: post #265

This has become a societal problem in Sweden during the past 20 or so years. 1: Healthcare efficiency is measured by "completed tasks" by primary care doctors, the apparatus is optimized for them handling simple cases and they thus often do some superficial checking and either send one home with some statistically correct medicine (aspirin/antibiotics) or punt away cases to a specialized doctor if it appears to be so…

There are examples everywhere. To quote Steve Jobs;

>When a company grows big enough, they want to replicate their initial success. They all thought about the "process" of how the first success was created. So they replicate those "process" across the company. And before very long the people confused that the process was the content.

And you can fit that from small companies to the world's largest government. Most of them forgot about their content.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#369

Post by thomassmith65 »

tshaddox wrote: post #293
thomassmith65 wrote: post #286

I noticed an example of this rule at my local hardware superstore. Around a decade ago, the store installed anti-theft cages. At first they only kept high-dollar items in the cages. It was a bit of an inconvenience, but not so bad. If a customer is dropping $200+ on some fancy power tool, he or she likely doesn't mind waiting five minutes. But a few years later, there was a change - almost certainly a 'data-driven' c…

It’s much more convenient to buy from Amazon than to try to find someone to unlock a glass case at the pharmacy. Especially since any pharmacy with glass cases for basic items will also be understaffed.

A few of my visits to this hardware store have been... memorable!

(1) locate the aisle with the item I want to verify it is still in stock

(2) spend 5 minutes wandering around the isles looking for a free attendant

(3) give up, press the 'service' button

(4) wait at the service desk for another 5 minutes until an attendant arrives to unlock the cage and hand me my $10 item

(5) have attendant inform me that he must immediately frogmarch me to the nearest self-checkout station, even though I had further items I wanted to buy. Otherwise, I would have a chance to secret the $10 item in my pocket, or to dash for the door?

(6) self-checkout and walk through the parking lot to place the item in my vehicle

(7) walk back to the store to buy my other items

(8) realize one of my other items is also locked in a cage

(9) got back to step (1) and repeat for a second item

I realize, as I type this, that the store has turned into the American equivalent of the British 'catalog merchant' except, in the UK, a catalog store gives you a numbered ticket, so the customer has, at least, a streamlined procedure and knows what to expect.

Re: Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)

#370

Post by kelseyfrog »

xapata wrote: post #338
kelseyfrog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If only that weren't called a "cycle" as if it had a predictable periodicity.

It has inevitability, but you're right, not predictable periodicity. Is predictable periodicity a necessary part of a cycle? I feel like the rise and fall of nations is a cycle, but not necessarily one of predictable periodicity.
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