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> Life is one huge proof of that. No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. > And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

by pif 7y ago

> Life is one huge proof of that. No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. > And yet the final result is incredibly resilient. It depends on whether you consider a species or an individual. Evolution is great as having species adapting and surviving. But this also means that the individual is hopeless against major incidents.

scotty79 7y ago
> No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. What? Your body maintains itself daily in harsh environment and onslaught of other life that tries to eat you (mostly microscopic). Once it stops maintaining itself irreversible damage occurs in minutes and you physically fall apart in days. Your body can keep maintaining itself for many decades. Any natural non living things that can exist that long are rocks. And that's only because they don't move. Show me a non-living solid thing that can move for 70 years at human pace. A complaint that you can't swap liver the way you swap car battery completely neglects the fact that the liver can maintain itself without moving anywhere, gradually rebuild itself in place for decades despite being regularly poisoned.
- pif 7y ago
  > A complaint that you can't swap liver... I'm not complaining! I'm grateful to evolution for providing me such a wonderful mechanism called body. But, I suppose you don't work in software development, do you? I say so because you, rightfully, took "maintenance" in its literal meaning, like "maintaining it the way it always was". Unfortunately, in software development (and maybe other professions) maintenance mean simply that people changed their minds or discovered a new business case and your product must adapt, WITHOUT CHANGING ANY OTHER INTERACTION!!! In real life, you can say: "he died because he drank poison", and it is a sad but accepted statement. In software development, the same sentence will be rephrased like: "he died because the crappy developer left an unfixed bug in his Liver plugin". Again, life is wonderful thing, and evolution clearly has to optimize for maximum efficiency. But in businness there are several times when you must give up some (or even much) efficiency for adaptability. It looks like the author of the article does not understand the need for this tradeoff.
  - scotty79 7y ago
    > "he died because he drank poison" > "he died because the crappy developer left an unfixed bug in his Liver plugin" Rather "He died because dna replication wasn't perfect and caused his liver to develop cancer", but I don't fully agree with article author either. Chaos is a result of optimising for efficiency but also by doing do very gradually in a piecemeal manner. This kind of process can lead to local optima that are hard to get out of if you don't stop occasionally to rethink things and clean up. The thing is that cleaning up must also be very thoughtfully driven by efficiency. When it's done for aesthetic reasons you end up loosing much of efficiency you worked so hard to discover by making a mess.
    - shrimp_emoji 7y ago
      >Rather "He died because dna replication wasn't perfect and caused his liver to develop cancer", but I don't fully agree with article author either. I think they meant the "unfixed bug" was that the liver can't process the lethal poison (as it does other toxins). It would be less of a bug than a vulnerability though; imperfect DNA replication leading to cancer is spiritually closer to a bug, IMO.

by pif 7y ago

scotty79 7y ago

> No! Life is huge proof that efficiency lowers maintenance possibility. What? Your body maintains itself daily in harsh environment and onslaught of other life that tries to eat you (mostly microscopic). Once it stops maintaining itself irreversible damage occurs in minutes and you physically fall apart in days. Your body can keep maintaining itself for many decades. Any natural non living things that can exist that long are rocks. And that's only because they don't move. Show me a non-living solid thing that can move for 70 years at human pace. A complaint that you can't swap liver the way you swap car battery completely neglects the fact that the liver can maintain itself without moving anywhere, gradually rebuild itself in place for decades despite being regularly poisoned.

pif 7y ago
> A complaint that you can't swap liver... I'm not complaining! I'm grateful to evolution for providing me such a wonderful mechanism called body. But, I suppose you don't work in software development, do you? I say so because you, rightfully, took "maintenance" in its literal meaning, like "maintaining it the way it always was". Unfortunately, in software development (and maybe other professions) maintenance mean simply that people changed their minds or discovered a new business case and your product must adapt, WITHOUT CHANGING ANY OTHER INTERACTION!!! In real life, you can say: "he died because he drank poison", and it is a sad but accepted statement. In software development, the same sentence will be rephrased like: "he died because the crappy developer left an unfixed bug in his Liver plugin". Again, life is wonderful thing, and evolution clearly has to optimize for maximum efficiency. But in businness there are several times when you must give up some (or even much) efficiency for adaptability. It looks like the author of the article does not understand the need for this tradeoff.
- scotty79 7y ago
  > "he died because he drank poison" > "he died because the crappy developer left an unfixed bug in his Liver plugin" Rather "He died because dna replication wasn't perfect and caused his liver to develop cancer", but I don't fully agree with article author either. Chaos is a result of optimising for efficiency but also by doing do very gradually in a piecemeal manner. This kind of process can lead to local optima that are hard to get out of if you don't stop occasionally to rethink things and clean up. The thing is that cleaning up must also be very thoughtfully driven by efficiency. When it's done for aesthetic reasons you end up loosing much of efficiency you worked so hard to discover by making a mess.
  - shrimp_emoji 7y ago
    >Rather "He died because dna replication wasn't perfect and caused his liver to develop cancer", but I don't fully agree with article author either. I think they meant the "unfixed bug" was that the liver can't process the lethal poison (as it does other toxins). It would be less of a bug than a vulnerability though; imperfect DNA replication leading to cancer is spiritually closer to a bug, IMO.