Mirroring Call-by-Need, or Values Acting Silly
This paper addresses the compositional interaction of copying and erasing behaviors in λ-calculus, identifying a gap in understanding how inefficiencies in evaluation strategies arise from their interplay. Method: We introduce *call-by-silly*, a symmetrically degenerate evaluation strategy orthogonal to call-by-need, deliberately combining the redundant copying of call-by-name with the blind erasure of call-by-value. We formally define the call-by-silly calculus and—using rewriting theory and a tight multi-type system—rigorously prove its contextual equivalence to call-by-value. Moreover, we construct the first type system that precisely characterizes the length of longest reduction sequences. Contribution: Our work reveals that contextual equivalence is insensitive to operational inefficiencies; provides the first symmetric degenerate model exhibiting both worst-case copying and worst-case erasure; and achieves a decidable, type-based characterization of evaluation length—establishing a novel bridge between type-theoretic precision and quantitative operational semantics.