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>I'm not personally arguing in favor of inefficiency. I'm fairly neutral on the topic. How can you be neutral on the topic of efficiency?Efficiency is better f

• shoo 8y ago
  > How can you be neutral on the topic of efficiency? Efficiency is better full stop. Efficiency in doing what, exactly? Efficiency might measure output of X as a function of input Y. Is having more X actually helpful or harmful? How will the overall system respond if it suddenly becomes possible to more efficiently transform Y into X? (This can lead to higher rate of consumption of Y) Does a strategy for increasing X / Y happen to damage some other valuable things A, B, C that aren't captured in the definition of the subsystem of X and Y we're trying to optimise?
• checkyoursudo 8y ago
  How do you recommend that I should think about famines and poverty? I care about a lot of things. I don't care about everything. In all, I am probably neutral on way more things than I favor or oppose. I certainly don't care about efficiency for efficiency's sake. There may be some cases where I am pro-efficiency, and some where I am not. I would not agree that "Efficiency is better full stop". There is nothing that is "full stop". There is always a dark side. My grandmother's neighbor being allowed to install a 1000-head livestock operation 1 km from her house would have been more efficient than what she fought for and ended up compromising on with them. That less efficient compromise may have even contributed to greater poverty and possibly some future famine for all I know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• deleted 8y ago
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