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Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Credit Card Rewards
I should make a list of all the things I could be trying to optimize, prioritized by ... well, I guess there are a few different variables I could use. I'll create a spreadsheet ...
Title text: I should make a list of all the things I could be trying to optimize, prioritized by ... well, I guess there are a few different variables I could use. I'll create a spreadsheet ...

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: VERY basic explanation.

Cueball is trying to choose the optimal credit card program (the one that will result in biggest savings with the expenses he has). He realises that he has to substract the cost of him spending time on optimizing, so he wants to optimise the time needed to do the optimising. But in order to to that effecientely, he first has to optimise the time spent on optimising the time...

Hairy notices hidden assumption that Cueball will spent his time on something more productive than this, e.g. that his time has value. Cueball response is that he can "fail to optimise so many other things"... This means that Cueball is aware of the big flaw in his reasoning.

The title text futrher expands the idea. Cueball wants to present a list of things to optimise to Hairy. However, he still needs to optimise the priorities of that list, before optimising the list itself.

Transcript

Ambox notice.png This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.


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