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Chapter Seven. What Did You Actually Ask For? Optimization Is Relentless Give a system a target and it will hit the target. Whether that's what you wanted is a different question, and one you'll often only think to ask too late. In 1902, a French colonial administrator in Hanoi had a rat problem. The city's sewers were overrun with rats, and the colonial government wanted them gone. The administrator devised an incentive scheme: he would pay a bounty for every rat killed. To collect the bount