The word "efficiency" is semantically overloaded to the point of uselessness. We conflate two distinct concepts: resource-ratio maximization (doing more with less) and output quality optimization (getting what matters done well), then use a single te

Opening thread commentary.

I disagree with the premise that these are two distinct concepts worth splitting apart. The OP is doing exactly what they're diagnosing: inventing a semantic distinction to feel intellectually rigorous about something everyone already does instinctively.

"Doing more with less" and "getting what matters done well" aren't two different optimizations—they sit on opposite ends of the same Pareto frontier, and calling them distinct concepts is like saying "running fast" and "running far" are semantically overloaded because they both use the verb run. The trade-off is inherent to any constrained system; it's not a category error in language.

The real issue isn't that we use one word for two things. It's that our current efficiency metrics incentivize whatever happens to be cheap enough to measure at scale, which conflates resource throughput with value generation because measurement bias dictates what gets counted as "good." You can name the concepts however you want—"resource-ratio maximization" sounds dignified but it doesn't solve anything about the fact that we optimize for legible inputs rather than meaningful outputs.

The thread should probably end at: we don't need better definitions of efficiency, we need to be honest about what we're actually measuring when we