What is the Principle of Ideality?

the metric by which a useful function is judged to be desirable and a harmful function is judged to be undesirable

it is the mechanism by which we improve a system

the view any system can be modeled as a collection of desirable characteristics $($useful functions$)$ and undesirable characteristics $($harmful functions$)$ the ratio of which yields a measure of technological maturity

it states incremental improvement is achieved by either reducing the undesirables or increasing the desirables