Local Optimum

Finding an arbitrary local minimum (local optimum) is relatively straightforward by using classical local optimization methods. Finding the global minimum of a function is far more difficult: analytical methods are frequently not applicable, and the use of numerical solution strategies often leads to very hard challenges.

A solution that looks like it's true, but it's only true within a narrow range of scenarios/variables/framings.

Tiago Forte on Theory of Constraints: many people unknowingly subscribe to a defunct management philosophy: that you can improve the performance of a company as a whole by individually improving the performance of its parts. These isolated improvements are known as “local optima” (or in traditional manufacturing contexts, “local efficiencies”). A local optimum is whatever is best for the performance of an individual part, whereas the global optimum is what is best for the performance of the system as a whole... When combined in an interdependent system, local optima actually make things worse.

plural: local optima