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Well, you're assuming you've already eliminated the suboptimal strategies which, in the case of combinatorial optimisation, is an NP-hard problem.

You can always find an exchange rate of, say, lives vs. money that will make your preferred solution globally optimal, but that's a posteriori. The choice of which  of multiple unimproveable strategies to adopt is political.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jan 24th, 2007 at 02:08:41 PM EST
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Hmmm... Yes, there's a lot of policy-space in which multiple metrics that are thought to be trade-offs can in fact be simultaneously improved.

For example, it is generally thought that increasing security by means of more effective surveillance and control must necessarily decrease freedom, when these could, in fact, be used to maintain or increase security while increasing freedom.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.

by technopolitical on Thu Jan 25th, 2007 at 12:23:27 AM EST
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