On Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 5:09 PM Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> wrote: > > A diversity of strategies with fallback behavior is sometimes the best > > strategy. Don't underestimate the contribution of rare and seemingly > > insignificant adverse events. Consider the lifecycle of the data over > > That is an intersting point --- we often focus on optimizing frequent > operations, but preventing rare but expensive-in-aggregate events from > happening is also useful.
Right. Similarly, we sometimes focus on adding an improvement, overlooking more promising opportunities to subtract a disimprovement. Apparently this is a well known tendency: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-brain-typically-overlooks-this-brilliant-problem-solving-strategy/ I believe that it's particularly important to consider subtractive approaches with a complex system. This has sometimes worked well for me as a conscious and deliberate strategy. -- Peter Geoghegan
