How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%

Any sufficiently large institution, over time, will prioritise self-preservation over achieving their core mission. This is sociology 101. Once a company has enough users to make it hard or impossible to measure immediate performance, self-preservation is achieved with internal manoeuvering and selling to execs.

The HN discussion[1] was started by an article that provided numbers that seemed to suggest that Wikipedia's spending was slowly spiraling out of control.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235

After tangentially working on this for a long time I'd say that the core issue is so deeply ingrained in human psyche that it may not even be a matter of education (starts early), let alone organization (starts happening when everything else is "set in stone"). There's no organizational structure that fits the types of activities we humans tend to do these days and that can deliver low latency, consistent results at scale. We mitigate issues in one area by accentuating them in others.

You can have one large flat structure but the load on the single coordinating circuit (the manager) will compromise quality. You can split the thing in multiple, individually coordinated units but the added layer of coordination and latency will compromise performance.

Maybe some form of general purpose but not quite full AI, something that combines human like intelligence and engineering like consistency, might be able to do what humans are supposed to but without the variability of humans (which is both good and bad).

This doesn't happen because it would reduce the power of top decision makers and potentially impact profits. e.g. a customer might ask for a chronologically ordered timeline on Facebook, but that would harsh engagement metrics, revenue, etc. If stuff like this did happen more often though, you'd get products and services that more often achieve their stated aims.

We don't really know what it is simply because we haven't introduced any "real" AI anywhere, let alone:

>> some form of general purpose but not quite full AI

Talking about efficiency as you scale up large organizations, it's inevitable that humans will introduce delays and variability in the work which cannot be eliminated because it's human nature, biologically and psychologically. Since humans can't change on a timescale that makes this discussion relevant, the only way for very large organizations (like large companies or governments) to operate just as efficiently as small ones is if they rely (quasi)exclusively on some AI that's as capable as top individuals at delivering results but with fewer of the drawbacks. Not only would it not operate as 100.000 distinct entities but as one or a few, it would also run consistently and predictably.

Normally the response from management was "but will that increase our profits?", to which my answer was "eventually, yes"

What really stuck out is that Buffet said its the most important thing about Business and he didn't learn it in Business school. Same! I did an MBA and it was the biggest elephant in the room.

"if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right"