6 ms·

That's not how economics works. If 100 million people each save 1 cent because of your work, you saved 1 million in total, but in practice nobody is observably

That's not how economics works. If 100 million people each save 1 cent because of your work, you saved 1 million in total, but in practice nobody is observably better off.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sebstefan 2y ago
So? It doesn't need to be visible to be worth optimizing?
- samastur 2y ago
  If you are making an economic (financial) argument for change like the original comment did, then yes, it should be visible positive effect. Obviously not if you are doing for your own fun or just improving the state of art.
  - sebstefan 2y ago
    Eventually everything ends up pumping the same resources from the same earth. The billion devices pool their 1 cents saved into the same pool of fossil fuels and the same power plants. You don't need the effect to be observable on an individual level It's something that is worth an engineer's time
h0p3 2y ago
There are people whose lives are improved by having an extra cent to spend. Seriously. It is measurable, observable, and real. It might not have a serious impact on the vast majority of people, but there are people who have very, very little money or have found themselves on a tipping point that small; pinching pennies alters their utility outcomes.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  https://xkcd.com/951/ https://xkcd.com/951/ Also, if you micro-optimize and that becomes your whole focus and ability to focus, your business is unable to innovate aka traverse the economic landscape and find new rich gradients and sources of "economic food", making you a dinosaur in a pit, doomed to eternally cannibalize on what other creatures descend into the pit and highly dependent on the pit not closing up for good.
- samastur 2y ago
  No, they really aren't. Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time. I admit my opinion is not based on first hand knowledge, but I have for years worked on projects trying to address poverty at different parts of this planet and can't think of a single one where this would be even remotely true.
  - h0p3 2y ago
    > Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time...I admit my opinion is not based on first hand knowledge... My opinion, however, is based on first-hand knowledge. I've been the kid saving those pennies, and I've worked with those kids. I understand that in the vast majority of cases, an extra penny does nothing more. That isn't what your original comment above claimed, nor is it what you've claimed here. My counterexample is enough to demonstrate the falsehood. Arguing that there are better ways to distribute these pennies is another matter, and I take that seriously as well.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    >No, they really aren't. Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time. Assuming a wage of $35/hour, each second is worth 1 cent. To save 1 cent you only need to reduce the time spent waiting for computers by a second across the entire lifetime of that person. Now here is the beauty of this. There isn't just a single guy out there doing this. There are hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, doing it.
    - 2y ago
whiterknight 2y ago
You’re describing the outcome of one individual person. Money is just a tool for allocating resources. Saving 1 million of resources is a good thing.
- wang_li 2y ago
  It's a meaningless thing if it's 1 million resources divided into 1 million actors who have no ability to leverage a short term gain of 1 resource. It's short term because the number of computers that are 100% busy 100% of the time is zero. A pipe throughput improvement means nothing if the computer isn't waiting on pipes a lot.
  - lillecarl 2y ago
    Eventually everyone ends up at a power plant, there's an insane amount of people living in the European grid. If an optimization ends up saving a couple tonnes of CO2 per year it is hard to not call it a good thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continen...
    - wang_li 2y ago
      A couple tons spread across 400 million people with a per capita emission of 5 tons per year is in the noise. If we're at the point of trying to hyper optimize there are far more meaningful targets than pipe throughput.
      - sqeaky 2y ago
        You are arguing against the concept of "division of labor". You are a few logical layers removed, but fundamentally that is at the heart of this. It isn't just about what you think can or can't be leveraged. Reducing waste in a centralized fashion is excellent because it will enable other waste to be reduced in a self reinforcing cycle as long as experts in their domain keep getting the benefits of other experts. The chip experts make better instructions, so the library experts make better software libs they add their 2% and now it is more than 4%, so the application experts can have 4% more theoughput and buy 4% fewer servers or spend way more than 4% less optimizing or whatever and add their 2% optimization and now we are at more than 6%, and the end users can do their business slightly better and so on in a chain that is all of society. Sometimes those gains are mututed. Sometimes that speed turns into error checking, power saving, more throughput, and every trying to do their best to do more with less.
azulster 2y ago
not if it costs 200 million in man-hours to optimize
bombela 2y ago
It's because of you that my phone is so slow.
imtringued 2y ago
An investment or economic action is economically viable when societal benefits exceed the initial capital outlay. However, in capitalism people care more about the personal return on the initial capital outlay, than the actual societal benefits of their investment. If society was a giant hivemind, then economic viability would take precedence over personal profit. Meanwhile if society is a bunch of isolated individuals, economic viability would take the backseat. So this tells us more about the limits of human psychology than it tells us about economics.

That's not how economics works. If 100 million people each save 1 cent because of your work, you saved 1 million in total, but in practice nobody is observably better off.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sebstefan 2y ago

So? It doesn't need to be visible to be worth optimizing?

samastur 2y ago
If you are making an economic (financial) argument for change like the original comment did, then yes, it should be visible positive effect. Obviously not if you are doing for your own fun or just improving the state of art.
- sebstefan 2y ago
  Eventually everything ends up pumping the same resources from the same earth. The billion devices pool their 1 cents saved into the same pool of fossil fuels and the same power plants. You don't need the effect to be observable on an individual level It's something that is worth an engineer's time

h0p3 2y ago

There are people whose lives are improved by having an extra cent to spend. Seriously. It is measurable, observable, and real. It might not have a serious impact on the vast majority of people, but there are people who have very, very little money or have found themselves on a tipping point that small; pinching pennies alters their utility outcomes.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago
https://xkcd.com/951/ https://xkcd.com/951/ Also, if you micro-optimize and that becomes your whole focus and ability to focus, your business is unable to innovate aka traverse the economic landscape and find new rich gradients and sources of "economic food", making you a dinosaur in a pit, doomed to eternally cannibalize on what other creatures descend into the pit and highly dependent on the pit not closing up for good.
samastur 2y ago
No, they really aren't. Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time. I admit my opinion is not based on first hand knowledge, but I have for years worked on projects trying to address poverty at different parts of this planet and can't think of a single one where this would be even remotely true.
- h0p3 2y ago
  > Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time...I admit my opinion is not based on first hand knowledge... My opinion, however, is based on first-hand knowledge. I've been the kid saving those pennies, and I've worked with those kids. I understand that in the vast majority of cases, an extra penny does nothing more. That isn't what your original comment above claimed, nor is it what you've claimed here. My counterexample is enough to demonstrate the falsehood. Arguing that there are better ways to distribute these pennies is another matter, and I take that seriously as well.
- imtringued 2y ago
  >No, they really aren't. Absolutely nobody's life is measurably improved because of 1 cent one time. Assuming a wage of $35/hour, each second is worth 1 cent. To save 1 cent you only need to reduce the time spent waiting for computers by a second across the entire lifetime of that person. Now here is the beauty of this. There isn't just a single guy out there doing this. There are hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, doing it.
  - 2y ago

whiterknight 2y ago

You’re describing the outcome of one individual person. Money is just a tool for allocating resources. Saving 1 million of resources is a good thing.

wang_li 2y ago
It's a meaningless thing if it's 1 million resources divided into 1 million actors who have no ability to leverage a short term gain of 1 resource. It's short term because the number of computers that are 100% busy 100% of the time is zero. A pipe throughput improvement means nothing if the computer isn't waiting on pipes a lot.
- lillecarl 2y ago
  Eventually everyone ends up at a power plant, there's an insane amount of people living in the European grid. If an optimization ends up saving a couple tonnes of CO2 per year it is hard to not call it a good thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continen...
  - wang_li 2y ago
    A couple tons spread across 400 million people with a per capita emission of 5 tons per year is in the noise. If we're at the point of trying to hyper optimize there are far more meaningful targets than pipe throughput.
    - sqeaky 2y ago
      You are arguing against the concept of "division of labor". You are a few logical layers removed, but fundamentally that is at the heart of this. It isn't just about what you think can or can't be leveraged. Reducing waste in a centralized fashion is excellent because it will enable other waste to be reduced in a self reinforcing cycle as long as experts in their domain keep getting the benefits of other experts. The chip experts make better instructions, so the library experts make better software libs they add their 2% and now it is more than 4%, so the application experts can have 4% more theoughput and buy 4% fewer servers or spend way more than 4% less optimizing or whatever and add their 2% optimization and now we are at more than 6%, and the end users can do their business slightly better and so on in a chain that is all of society. Sometimes those gains are mututed. Sometimes that speed turns into error checking, power saving, more throughput, and every trying to do their best to do more with less.

azulster 2y ago

not if it costs 200 million in man-hours to optimize

bombela 2y ago

It's because of you that my phone is so slow.

imtringued 2y ago

An investment or economic action is economically viable when societal benefits exceed the initial capital outlay. However, in capitalism people care more about the personal return on the initial capital outlay, than the actual societal benefits of their investment. If society was a giant hivemind, then economic viability would take precedence over personal profit. Meanwhile if society is a bunch of isolated individuals, economic viability would take the backseat. So this tells us more about the limits of human psychology than it tells us about economics.