Oscar_Cunningham comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: matt 01 September 2010 01:40AM

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Comment author: whpearson 01 September 2010 11:52:32AM 7 points [-]

I'm writing a post on systems to govern resource allocation, is anyone interested in having any input into it or just proof reading it?

This is the intro/summary:

How do we know what we know? This is an important question, however there is another question which in some ways is more fundamental, why did we choose to devote resources to knowing those things in the first place?

As a physical entity the production of knowledge take resources that could be used for other things, so the problem expands to how to use resources in general. This I'll call the resource allocation problem (RAP). This problem is widespread and occurs in the design of organisations as well as computer systems.

The problem is this, we want to allocate resources in such a fashion that enables us to achieve our goals. What makes the problem interesting is that making a decision about how to allocate resources takes resources itself. This makes the formalisation of optimal solutions to this problem seemingly impossible.

However you can formalise potential near optimality. That is look how to design systems that can change the amount of resources allocated to the different activities of the system with the minimum of overhead.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 01 September 2010 01:07:42PM *  4 points [-]

I was having similar thoughts the other day while watching a reality TV show where designers competed for a job from Philippe Starck. Some of them spent ages trying to think of a suitable project, and then didn't have enough time to complete it; some of them launched into the first plan they had and it turned out rubbish. Clearly they needed some meta-planning. But how much? Well, they'll need to do some meta-meta planning...

I'd be happy to give your post a read through.

ETA: The buck stops immediately, of course.