Now there’s a title to get you confused. If something is efficient it cannot be inefficient, surely? But in the crazy world we have created nowadays the two do not always follow. For instance, a PR message can appear efficient, but is full of spin.
Underneath so much of the modern world this factor rings true. A politician can appear efficient, but increasingly they are proving to be totally inefficient.
Such an argument goes to the heart of Big Biz.
The beauty of today’s corporate world is said to be that it runs with the perfection of a machine. Maximising everything to its utmost potential, nothing is wasted, and the end result is profit for all, and a service next to none.
In many ways, this is quite true. But there are problems in such an approach. First of all, it ends up being an unbending machine indeed. Everything is down to procedure, and any deviation from the norm becomes impossible.
And we’ve all been on the receiving end of this inflexibility.
But the major problem goes even deeper. Because this type of inflexibility may be essential to the running of a machine, but it is counter to good order.
Essential to any non-machine is the idea of surplus. Things happen in life that cause disruptions to the system, or even create sudden higher demand. But have you noticed that whenever our corporate world is faced with such a blip, it fails to provide?
Machines are machines, and societies are societies, and sadly the two cannot possibly meet. But too many who think they know seem to think they can. And as long as this is the case, the efficient will always be ultimately inefficient.
© Anthony North, February 2008
Hollywood
What you mention is specially true in the show biz. The studios keep hiring economists with "pie-chart" mentality that try to crack the recipe for "the perfect blockbuster", regarding heavily on studies of tendencies, polls, pre-screening tests etc, etc. No wonder why most of the time those flicks suck big time, and the execs end up scratching their heads wondering why they failed.
The only studio that has refused to follow this "pie-chart" approach is Pixar. Recently I heard some interviews by director Brad Bird where he mentioned that in Pixar they follow their guts, which of course would scare the living crap out of studio execs who want to keep their reserved parking space above anything else. "Movies —Bird explains— are nothing but a big gamble, and if you want something safe you'd better go and make widgets instead."
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
Very true
Hi Red,
This is very true, and it extends throughout 'culture'. Once up on a time a publisher would nurture an author through three, possibly four, failures, in the knowledge that the writer was good enough. It usually paid off in the end because when the eventual book sold well, the others followed.
In television, one of the UK's most successful sitcoms is 'Only Fools and Horses'. The first two series flopped. Today, it would have been taken off, and a masterpiece would have been missed.
Most disgusting is the new idea of the public voting for what they like in everything. This is a classic example of the failure of democracy. After all, genius is 'different'. So how can genius appear when popular opinion is based only on what they know?
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A brilliant idea crawls out of the corpses of a hundred failures
Anthony North
local optima
This kind of stuff is actually well understood in mathematics. What these people do is find the neighborhood of a local optimum, and then refine their methods to get closer and closer to that local optimum. That is relatively easy, which is why show business people, or politicians, or business people, do this all the time.
What is also well understood in mathematics that searching for a more global optimum is very very hard. There is no known solution that can be achieved in any reasonable time. In fact it is well known that, with current methods, there cannot be a general solution.
Of course this does not mean we should stop looking. In many cases, there are only a few local optima that are interesting, so we can investigate those.
But what bothers me, similar to anthonynorth's concerns, is that politics and business is ruled by people with simple minds, who believe that making progress on their one local optimization is the only way to go. Movie people, music people, environmentalists, pacifists, religious extremists, and you can add you favorites to the list. The list is long.
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If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
(Bill Clinton, and perhaps others)
Interesting
Good morning Earthling,
An interesting take you have on this. If I've got you right, could you say that math is thus assisting a kind of fanatical specialisation, and that's why we're having this inefficiency?
If so, then my pleas for moderation and a more holistic approach would sound about right.
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I'm certain of only one thing. Nothing is certain
Anthony North
Yes, very interesting
I won't go too far in this, 'less I may be perceived to be hijacking the thread, but just to say this:
Universal or global mathematical optimums don't exist absolutely. Local optimums seem more efficient but there are always variables which only make them apparently optimum. (In fact they are only relatively optimal and never absolutely optimal).
Reason being that individuals are much more unique that they can ever imagine.
The more conscious a being, the less he can be rounded mathematically because the source of consciousness of the individual precedes the law rather than its opposite. Mathematics are thought to reflect the law, but alas it only translates the law and the law is not a fixed permanent feature.
But I digress...
I agree with Anthony here too.
Math is assisting all kinds of purposes for which it may be put to use. The unconscious mind is fanatical and seeks to find any tool, mechanical like itself, to contain and determine.
But it cannot be efficient because math is descriptive and does not determine, so it is only relatively efficient, so long as there is no evolution in the system it seeks to describe.
Unfortunately, the universe is in evolution.
Even an holistic approach will not take evolution as the source from which to project its determination in a grand scale of cause and effect, because that approach, when you look at it closely, remains very personal. But I do understand where you are leading to.
tools and users
I think we are describing the same thing from different points of view.
As Richard says, mathematics is descriptive. While it can sometimes can give very precise descriptions, it is a tool that does not do anything by itself. It has no intentions, good or bad.
The problem, especially when mathematics is used in social science, or in economics or business, is that the description is not complete.
They are trying to describe what people do. So they some up with a number of types of people, like the average white male with an income between $100,000 and $150,000. Then they pretend that everyone who fits this behaves the same. Obviously that is not even close to true, but economists and business people believe it is close enough. I say this it is not close enough, even for their limited purposes. Nevermind the personal insult to all these guys.
Where this turns into anthonynorth's Inefficiency is that people with a moderate amount of control deceive themselves into believing they really know what is going on.
And then they act on this belief. Using the moderate (and inexact and incomplete) controls they have, and then these controls don't work in the time required.
I know my points here have been drifting between posts. I really have 2 points.
The problem of optimization is a lot harder than just being efficient in one way of doing things. Mathematics tells us this.
And, the people who are using mathematics to optimize things are deceiving themselves, or the public. Usually both. That's why it doesn't work real well.
This post was a little bit of a rant, wasn't it ?
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If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
(Bill Clinton, and perhaps others)
To sum it up
When you have little understanding and control over a system, it is a HUGE mistake to extrapolate and think you have ABSOLUTE understanding and control over said system.
Case in point: Jurassic Park . Yeah, I know, I should be given real examples, but fiction is better to present concepts because is clearer than real life... then again, that is in itself a generalization, isn't it? Crap! :-(
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
examples
ok, some examples of optimization ending up as failure.
A classic is the communist planned economic policy. It optimized control, at the price of economic performance. This lead to a very unhappy populace, and eventually those optimizing control lost control. Or had to change their policies.
Another example is the labor movement. Born of terrible conditions for workers, labor unions over many decades optimized the conditions of the union members. Nothing wrong with that. Except some of them optimized too much, and optimized their employers (and themselves) out of business. This happened in the UK, and is still happening with the US automobile industry.
While we are at automobiles - they are optimized to fit roads that thousands of years ago were optimized for oxcarts. This road optimization was limited, because you can't vary the width of an ox very much. There is no reason to believe that the current width of automobiles is optimal in any sense. We don't know, because nobody has looked at it. Because we are limited by the width of an ox.
So, anthonynorth's Inefficiency also comes from sticking to optimization goals too long, after the major goals have been achieved, and from staying within constraints that no longer exist.
Why does this happen? I say humans are stubborn and lazy. We do not re-examine goals and constraints as much as we should.
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If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
(Bill Clinton, and perhaps others)
lowest denominator.....
.....or the least chance of error.
Most laws a made to accommidate the worst, or the lowest denominator.
Engineering is based on the least chance of failure or error.
Marketing targets the lowest denominator as it has the largest target.
Inefficiency is when the largest target is missed, percentage wise. Efficiency is when the highest number is scored by the least effort. This is done by targeting the largest denominator. Can never be totally efficient.
"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.
Good debate
Hi guys,
I like this debate. Richard, how can you be hijacking my thread when you agree with me? :-) I think any 'system' will be restrictive because it cannot cater for all.
Earthling, you never rant. You simply optimise your thoughts in an inefficient kind of way :-) And you're right about averages - I've spent my life trying to meet an 'average' person and when I found one he turned into a percentage point.
This is the point, Red, no system can be controlled absolutely. Commonsense is a balance between wild guesses and chaos. And math abhors a wild guess.
Floppy, targeting the largest denominator is even more of a generalisation than I would make. You raise a valid point. No wonder it doesn't work.
One point I think is missed is that the whole Big Biz system today is geared, more than anything else, to profit. Is this making the system too blinkered, too specialised, and missing the errors inherent in the system?
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I'm fanatical about moderation
Anthony North
I dunno
Is this making the system too blinkered, too specialised, and missing the errors inherent in the system?
Well, I don't know. But it sure has made it less... humane.
Amd sometimes more static. Take politicians like Romney; I don't pretend to know much about american politics, but it seems this guy fell into the same trap that most candidates: trying to tell everybody what they want to hear and in the end getting everybody angry for not taking a clear stand.
But in the end most modern politicians won't act before consulting their tendencies analist (will this action affect my numbers? will I lose popularity among this sector?), and of course without hindering that big marketing corporate engine you are describing; so in the end, they prefer to leave things just as they are.
The only thing they change is the numbers in the statistics; just like in '1984', and they get everybody cheering :-(
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
Politicians
Hi Red,
I think, in many ways, we insult some of the great politicans of the past by calling the d***heads we have today, politicans. Rather, they're party animals, intent on a career, merely oiling the machine, like managers.
They wouldn't know a real debate if they stepped in it :-)
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I'm fanatical about moderation
Anthony North
Damn right
I mean, I cannot picture a state man like Churchill being elected today. For starters the man would have to get a plastic surgery!
Secondly if you go telling people you are offering them "Blood, sweat & tears" they would go running to the other candidate in a heartbeat.
Maybe in 50 years instead of elections like we have today we'll have a Reality TV program, like "Big Brother" or "The Apprentice", and the winner would get to be President :-)
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
True
Red, you said:
'Maybe in 50 years instead of elections like we have today we'll have a Reality TV program, like "Big Brother" or "The Apprentice", and the winner would get to be President :-)'
I'm sure the present US incumbent thinks he already is. It's the only way I can rationally explain him :-)
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Nite, nite
Anthony North
Inefficient Humanoids
Your comments really hit home with me. We've enrolled in the "LEAN" plan at my workplace. They keep telling us it's all about processes but you're absolutely right--they want robots instead of people!
early signs
An early sign of this kind of thing was when companies renamed their "personnel" department to the "human resources" department.
This sounds more scientific, to management types who know nothing about science. And it is, in my view, an obvious and blatant insult to the personnel.
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If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
(Bill Clinton, and perhaps others)
Totally disgusting
In my view calling personnel "human resources" makes them sound like cattle and just an exploitable component of a business.
Regards, Kathrinn
Astute
I had never made a line between those points Earthling, but you are amazingly right.
Personnel
I've worked in personnel departments, back in the 1970s. We never lost the idea that we were dealing with people. The system was not computerised, and heads of department were people who understood people. The system often bent to accommodate particular situations. Indeed, it was argued that if the strict rules were followed, such departments could never operate.
The situation remains, in all walks of life, that if the rules are followed absolutely, nothing can operate efficiently. Earthling is right, here. The reason is discretion, and the ability to use commonsense, has gone. It has been taken away in the pursuit of efficiency. And nothing big can be ultimately efficient at all.
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I'm fanatical about moderation
Anthony North
I common sense gone?
Or is it that common sense has always been but changed over time? Is not common sense dictated by what the majority thinks to be correct? Like politically correctness nowadays?
What people need is not common sense but to start thinking for themselves, would you agree? Then you could have systems that really are creative because more possibilities can be envisioned.