15 theses on the optimization crisis - by Daniel Frank

notnottalmud.substack.com · 963 words · saved by 2 readers

Everything is optimized now, which includes optimizing for the legible over illegible, optimizing for internal benefits at the expense of any negative externality, and optimizing to remove all slack from the system.

Everything is optimized now, which includes optimizing for the legible at the expense of the illegible, optimizing for internal benefits at the expense of any negative externality, and optimizing to remove all slack from the system. Because an optimized entity still takes the same name and broad form as before, we often don’t appreciate how much the new variant has lost compared to its predecessor, while superficially being much “better”. This optimization has led to extreme sorting, across all dimensions, including through mechanisms like social sorting, career sorting, and assortative…

15 theses on the optimization crisis - by Daniel Frank

saved by

related reading