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Comment by scottyah | Hacker News Reader

You should see how optimal the poster's first dates are! Meet at a location with premade bottles of Soylent while they ask 15 questions. Done in 30min. Optimized away the cost and time "wasted" at restaurants or mini-golf type activities.

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I just send prospective dates a pre-screening questionaire, my social résumé, and a doordash giftcard. It's really efficient since I don't need to waste my time going on bad dates or even leaving the house. Unfortunately I haven't figured out the best way screen for candidates on the second round because they never return the questionaire.

Oh, you just need to attach a prize draw to the questionnaire. It really boosts response rates with a low CPA.

It's a cute little optimization puzzle they made for people to solve, with lawn mowing as a graphical hook to make the problem more approachable and fun. Similarly, my kids have a physical logic puzzle where the theme is putting plastic cats into plastic boxes, but it's not supposed to be training for actually optimizing cat packaging.

How is this any more or less valid a use of time vs. mini-golf?

(The "real" analogous problems are things like optimizing factories or delivery routes, and the way they are solved is by programming a computer to, but this is a toy version.)

That’s rather cruel. Optimizing lawn mowing conserves human and machine fuel/battery, especially on large plots or as professionals or in hot climates. Misapplying optimizations to one’s free time is absolutely in line with your stereotype, but that’s much more a widespread defect of judgment in computer engineers than in mowers.

Then the most optimal solution of all is to have a lawn that doesn't need mowing at all.

The same skills used to mow lawns are also used in more complex settings to e.g. tend to farm fields, where you have to account for product wastage versus turning radius versus machinery operating hours. (Thanks, Farming Simulator!)

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