
The Efficiency Delusion - hunglee2
https://onezero.medium.com/the-efficiency-delusion-f6a97241e1e1
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mikeash
An interesting aspect of efficiency is that it’s often at odds with
resiliency.

For example, consider an airline. Maximum efficiency would involve every
airworthy plane being fully occupied making flights that are 100% full. Ok,
sounds good. Now, one of your planes hits a sign on takeoff and has to return
to the airport and be grounded for repairs. How do you deal with all of these
passengers who expect to get to their destination? You can't, your incredible
efficiency means you’re fucked when something goes wrong. Now imagine that
each of those people is part of some other enterprise that’s 100% efficient.
The failure will cascade and before long, society’s only concern for
efficiency will be about how to most efficiently crack each other’s heads open
and feast on the goo inside.

~~~
opportune
But, this is just one simplistic definition of efficiency. You could include
as part of your model some % slack coefficient, some % of failure for each
component in the network, and find some kind of allocation that maximizes
expected "efficency". The problem isn't optimization, it's that your model
doesn't include enough variables

~~~
alexpetralia
Can your model ever include enough variables though?

In other words, you can stuff all the variables you want in there, but you
will likely still have error - especially with complex systems (regime
switches, etc.) - that you did not put in your model. I think economists tried
the "model stuffing" technique, and I'm not sure how much it helped in
planning something as complex as the economy.

~~~
arkades
>Can your model ever include enough variables though?

Resiliency isn’t invincibility.

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alexpetralia
I would keep in mind that efficiency/optimization is only possible _given
complete knowledge of the system_. You can only truly optimize if you know all
the inputs.

For any uncertainty you have not modeled, _you must have slack in the system_.
This is true of your personal workflow, your professional environment, your
romantic life, your business. If you aim only for optimization, you are
implicitly optimizing _for the things you have modeled_ - this can often come
at the cost of the things you have not.

I would say that, perhaps loosely, optimization is the delusion of
overconfidence. Slightly less optimization, and more redundancy, is good
caution.

More info here:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdvogC9VMAEz9Y1?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdvogC9VMAEz9Y1?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)

~~~
TeMPOraL
That, like elsewhere, is a naive view of efficiency - in the same way trying
to apply mathematical logic to reality is a naive approach. Just like reality
is best modeled in probabilistic terms, optimization can be done on
probabilistic models. Redundancy comes out of it naturally, if you put costs
and uncertainties in your models.

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chrisco255
Is it a delusion? I don't think so. I've seen very real efficiency
improvements thanks to tech and software. For example, do you know how
frictionless it is to travel these days compared to 10-20 years ago? You can
book a flight, reserve a table at a highly rated restaurant, get turn-by-turn
directions, convert currency, look up foreign language translations, book a
hotel or AirBNB, order delivery, take photographs and share them with friends
and fam instantly, etc, etc. Much more efficient than the old way. You'd risk
getting lost, disconnected, lose time to search, lose money to excessive
travel expenses, etc.

And that's just vacation travel. The author casually mentions that Uber and
Lyft supplanted "hailing cabs" as if it were not much of an innovation, when
we all know what the experience was like if you were in any city less dense
than New York...it was a pain in the ass to get a cab and it was usually way
more expensive than it was worth and the cars were hardly ever clean and you
had no idea what kind of driver you were getting. You were also lucky if they
took a credit card.

~~~
alexandercrohde
The author isn't saying efficiency doesn't exist. The thesis is "We believe
that if technology can make some aspect of our lives more efficient, we’ll get
back free time to do the things we actually find meaningful."

Of course things are more efficient now. But the real question is-- does that
make our lives better? Is an _efficient_ vacation a better vacation? What
would an "efficient" vacation look like (the idea sound gross to me. Getting
lost and overwhelmed are part of the fun for me).

Simply put, efficiency taken to a logical extreme is bad and we should
acknowledge that.

~~~
atoav
On the individual level: If your perspective on the world is one of
efficiency, you will never be able to eat the fruits of your increase of it.
You will just pack more things into less time, less space and less money.
However if you are like e.g. my favourite sysadmin, you will be incredible
efficient in order to have more time for the fun parts. If he weren’t
efficient be wouldn’t be able to foxus on stuff he likes because be would
constantly be out to extinguish fires. Because he is efficient, he must not.

Efficiency is about _your optimization goals,_ a guy like him is optimizing
for free time that is why he optimized the rest of it to such a degree, that
he can afford it without changing the whole thing for the worse.

He could easily also have used that free time to do more work, but he refused.

~~~
alexandercrohde
My stance may be a little stronger than the author's here, but it's something
I wish I understood a decade ago.

I used to think that _more free time_ was a key to happiness. Turns out I
don't believe that at all now, and most of my free time I spend browsing
internet garbage.

I realized that I _enjoy_ challenges and _being needed_ is actually very
fulfilling to me, and not something I can just artificially make happen in my
free time. As such, perhaps in a more efficient world (where I don't help my
neighbor fix their car, don't cook with roommates) I am less happy.

This isn't to say efficiency isn't often good, but I think some of the things
it may cost (e.g. fewer possible friendships) may not be worth the price.

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lukecameron
One thing I've noticed since moving to a city where driving is unnecessary, is
how good it feels to drive occasionally. While I think a big part of that is
the physical sensation, I also think doing these types of "menial tasks" can
put your mind into a mode that is not possible when being entertained by a
smartphone/kindle/whatever.

Currently on my 35 minute commute, I can be using a smartphone about 90% of
that time. Does that sound efficient? Sure. But I think the article hits upon
a real point, if we're going to "save time" on a particular activity, it had
better be a worse activity than what we end up replacing it with.

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jldugger
> Take the myth that once self-driving cars spare people from the burden of
> needing to drive to work and pay attention to the road, they’ll be able to
> focus their attention on invigorating and rewarding activities, like reading
> for pleasure during the commute. More likely, employers will expect the
> workday to begin the second you enter the vehicle. Instead of being
> disburdened, more productivity will be ratcheted out of us.

It does free us up to do more reading. Downside: that reading will be
approximately 100 percent more email.

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robocat
> What really resonated is that some of the engineers you interviewed
> described experiencing inefficient situations as really troubling, like
> smelling something awful or tasting something gross.

Watching some people do their daily work so inefficiently makes me squirm - I
look away.

However I've seen that drive for efficiency in a wide range of professions: it
definitely isn't peculiar to engineers (e.g. the shortcuts a chef learns).

I also explicitly deoptimise some things so I can enjoy them more e.g. varying
routes.

~~~
atoav
I think what the theme for.me and my urge to optimize is, is that I like to
automate/optimize processes that I hate doing repeatedly, while processes that
I like doing are allowed to be inefficient (e.g. i make.my filter coffee by
hand using a hand grinder).

If you optimize things on a personal level you yourself are responsible for
what to do with the newly won spare time.

On a society level this is different however, because not working means no job
and no job means no money. If they make the job you did more efficient by
optimizing and automating all the bits you liked and leave you with all the
bits you hated (and a lower wage), you will have a hard time cheering over the
optimization.

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skybrian
There are good points here. On the other hand, the world's wealth is built on
efficiency improvements and in some cases they can be literally lifesaving.

I guess it's just about knowing when to turn it off.

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vannevar
This article is spot on. Engineers increasingly define the course of our daily
lives, and they've been taught, almost universally, that efficiency is not
only a value in and of itself, it is the _highest_ value we can pursue. But
we're all destined for the grave, and if we truly want maximum efficiency, it
follows that we should promptly kill ourselves. Clearly efficiency cannot be
our only guide, and I think the current technocracy has gone much too far down
that dead-end.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Though I think suicide is a bad example of "efficiency," I think the larger
point stands.

I think it's a good exercise to think of what a highly-efficient world might
look like and whether it would be pleasant at all (one language, perfectly
regular architecture, increasing isolation, more interactions with machines
instead of people, less chance/wonder in life)

~~~
Pimpus
Reminds me of Universal Paperclips.

