> The optimization quote is great, but it's usually deployed as an appeal to authority to justify a preconceived, ideological decision -- God knows, I've done this.
Most people I've known have used it as shorthand for "decisions based on optimization concerns require some justification that the optimization is important to the specific application and warrants the cost that come with it"; it's not an appeal to authority (indeed, the authority behind it is almost never referenced, just the bare quote), and its usually, IME, a defense against a preconceived, ideological decision (it works poorly to justify a preconceived, ideological decision, because it doesn't have carry much weight if the person proposing the optimization has any basis for making the claim that the proposed optimization isn't premature; as it shouldn't.)
Most people I've known have used it as shorthand for "decisions based on optimization concerns require some justification that the optimization is important to the specific application and warrants the cost that come with it"; it's not an appeal to authority (indeed, the authority behind it is almost never referenced, just the bare quote), and its usually, IME, a defense against a preconceived, ideological decision (it works poorly to justify a preconceived, ideological decision, because it doesn't have carry much weight if the person proposing the optimization has any basis for making the claim that the proposed optimization isn't premature; as it shouldn't.)