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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Humans might be kinda slow and expensive, but their ability to handle a lot of variable data and inputs and weigh them dynamically, filter out absurd results before applying them, and etc is pretty amazing.

Like if someone comes to me and says "what if we... did X with the schedule". I could tell them how to do that and not to right away. The code would have to be changed / rewritten and tested and fail at it each time... so much mess.

Especially when scheduling other humans... the humans being scheduled can smell a computer scheduling a mile away and IMO they expect the worst at that point. They're not necessarily wrong.

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I suspect that the big thing there is negotiation and social skills. It is not just about making schedule, it is also about talking with people, making them compromise, making them happy despite not gaining everything they wanted, explaining them that what they wanted they wont like actually, making them understand others too.

This is a good point on social aspect: no software can go to a couple of teachers and say: look, there's an overlap and we've only got one classroom,how about you do x,y,z and then next time you get x,y,z.

Well, not yet.

> their ability to handle a lot of variable data and inputs and weigh them dynamically

I dunno. Computers are pretty good at this one too, on different kinds of variance and weights.

The largest problem I see is that everyone is discussing "either or" on this thread, while the clear winner is both.

I think ultimately if you're working with humans the question is if you want the schedule to solve a sort of math problem for you ... or if you want folks to be happy.

They are very much not the same thing and the dynamic nature of keeping people happy and filling a schedule is extremely difficult to account for with software.

They are far worse at it than humans. This is the difference between narrow AI and general AI. Humans can do millions of different complex tasks, and can adapt when the situation changes. Computers are terrible at updating their models automatically based on new information, as they don't have understanding of the bigger context. Worse still, software today has no way of analyzing and adjusting the assumptions it is operating off of.

People are (currently) better than computers at updating their models but I don’t think we’re particularly great at it. Look at how many business run on the “this is how we’ve always done it” model

This isn't because we are bad at it but rather because of politics and some being idiots.

I tend to disagree. There’s all kinds of cognitive biases that show we’re bad at updating our mental models

Computers solve the legible problems. But scheduling is one where the problems lack in hard specification, and plans involve several "layers" of prioritization, so what's called for is approximate results that avoid failure modes, which is something a skilled human does pretty well.

I do think that software speeds up some parts of the process, but like so many automated processes, it's computer assistance, not computer intelligence.

I was reading some old literature a few months ago on this related to police staffing where union issues had to be taken into account. It seems adding social penalties is a way to do this algorithmically

You’re giving me flashbacks to some software I worked on a while ago that had to use rules from three different collective agreements from nursing unions. Turns out writing business logic for rules that aren’t internally consistent is a challenge, and unlike most LOB projects I’ve worked on, the procedure can not be amended until the next round of bargaining.

Assuming you can get someone highly competent to do scheduling, which isn't all that likely. More likely you'll get someone who both produces mediocre results, and favors their friends.

Even if you can get competence, you may want to automate it anyways. I'm currently working in health, and I recently visited a radiology center that claimed it took a full year to get front desk staff fully up to speed. Understanding the full scheduling requirements for all scans, some medicare rules that influence scheduling, and how to handle all the various problems, takes a long time. They live in terror of having front desk staff leave, because a quick replacement is impossible.

Hopefully pay is commensurate with responsibility.

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