Brief Report: Efficiency as a Dynamic Range and Distortion as Its Consequence in Complex Systems

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20602038
Efficiency is conventionally treated as a fixed optimum. This treatment works inside artificially closed systems where variables can be isolated and held constant. It becomes systematically misleading when applied to real conditions of constant flux and dense interconnection.

This paper develops the position that point-based efficiency belongs to parareality — the human-made layer of stable semiotic representations (words, numbers, fixed categories, and single optima) that we necessarily use to navigate the world. These representations are not neutral descriptions of reality; they are abstractions that simplify and, to varying degrees, distort the continuous, variable nature of actual processes. Mathematics, being built upon language, inherits these structural limitations.