Originally Posted by kbarch

You're a smart guy; I thought you'd get the analogy when I paraphrased Hamlet. As he was pointing out how limited Horatio's philosophy was, I was trying to point out how limited the kind of cost/benefit analysis one would do on a spreadsheet is.

People don't go around calculating costs and benefits before every purchase decision, and even when they do, they can only assume that their criteria are sufficient; they decide how to judge, but they cannot know how imperfect their criteria are.

Sometimes we like to compare components' weights and costs and calculate dollars per grams saved and stuff like that, but sometimes we are better off when we stop wasting time and just go to the shop and buy what's on hand.