It Doesn't Pay to be Principled.

Recently, I had an interesting discussion with coworker at work...

At some point, I started saying:

"... well, that's not a very principled way of doing it..." (here in a machine learning/statistics/mathematical sense of being principled, as in the Occam's Razor principle aka MDL, etc., principled as opposed to ad hoc)

and then, realizing some thing... I continued to talk


"... of course I realize that being principled in statistical sense doesn't always pay..."

"...err, of course I also realize that being principled in general doesn't necessarily pay..."

... and finally I realize that what I'm saying makes no sense to be said, which is to say that it needn't be said, as sad as that may be...

"Being principled doesn't pay!"
"Having principles does not pay!!"

I concluded, finally, struggling with my grammar, logic and sanity, my soliloquy to a bunch of ppl some where in some office some Friday afternoon...