5 ms·

And efficiency is mutually exclusive with flexibility. The more you optimise to do one thing the less you can easily do other things.

• jmward01 2y ago
  I think the evidence says you can have both. When I say 'the evidence' I mean just looking at nature. In nature you clearly see animals and plants that are massively more efficient at tasks than their ancestors all while living in more diverse environments and in larger numbers so clearly you can get both efficiency and flexibility gains. I think though your point has merit but I am finding it hard to write a super clear example of it. Maybe this is because there is a confusion between efficiency and temporary advantage? I think of efficiency more like an attempt to get the maximum infinite gain while a temporary advantage attempts to maximize the immediate gain only. It isn't an efficiency gain if you go out of business in 5 years just so you get a windfall now. With that in mind it is clear that you can create temporary advantages very easily but they may not be long term efficiency gains. Figuring out what is just a temporary gain and what is a long term efficiency gain is hard though. There are no crystal balls to tell you the truth of the future. Diversity in a system means that you will have a lot of different approaches to the problem to try which gives you more of a chance to find the long term efficiency instead of just a temporary advantage.