Stop Optimizing Your Life and Start Living It Instead
Optimization is just another banal buzzword
The danger that humanity faces isn’t that algorithms and robots will rise up and seize power; the danger we face is that we will voluntarily become indistinguishable from the algorithms and robots.
Optimization could be dismissed as another banal buzzword even if it wasn’t for the pernicious application of the concept to our lives.
Everywhere from digital nomad gurus to the false prophets of productivity, we are taught how to optimize every aspect of our existence. You can find carefully scripted routines for your mornings, your sex life, and your bowel movements. There is no aspect of human life that you couldn’t be doing better.
To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s character, Ian Malcolm, in Jurassic Park:
We’re so busy studying how to optimize our lives, we never stopped to consider if we should optimize our lives.
The Case Against Optimization
Optimization means making something the best it can possibly be. Shouldn’t that be what we are all striving for — to live the best life we possibly can?
