Don't go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as creativity, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability–whether they are easily measured or not. Kenneth Boulding
They based their extrapolations on numbers. That worked as long as money, which is easily measured numerically, was the principle motivating force in human affairs. But as time progressed, human actions became responsive instead to a multitude of incommensurable vectors. Gene Wolfe