In her book, Coco Krume surprisingly sees Optimization as the opposite of Capitalism, arguing Capitalism is a bottom-up process where the market only defines the rules of engagement, allowing system behavior to emerge through the open exchange process. Optimization, on the other hand, implies a top-down pre-conceived goal. The optimization process becomes an asymptotic approach towards an ideal state.
The need for emergence is key. Temporarily suspending one's need in gathering data and improving towards a goal creates the necessary slack for magical things to happen. Strava, for example, is a great way to track performance for runners and cyclists. I'm not a big fan of it because it reframes running and cycling as an Optimization problem. Once the app is on, I start to take every step with the goal to set a personal record or to become the "king of the mountain" by hammering all the climbs. I don't disagree that being faster and stronger is part of the joy in these sports. What I find troubling is that the things Strava doesn't measure are important too and often mutually exclusive to the things it does measure. For example, I enjoy running to beautiful spots in the city to soak in the scenery. I like stroking my hands through the trail-side grass and feeling the organic texture, in the fashion of Gladiator. I love social bike rides, where people can talk to each other about things in life or at work while riding side by side on bikes. Strava pulls me away from these alternative modes of happiness, and nudges me towards the singular goal as defined by a few numbers.
I've recently picked up rowing. The sport is almost synonymous with Optimization: we live and breathe stroke rate and split time. The Romanian women's eight achieved viral status in the rowing community during the Paris Olympic games because of their whopping 52 strokes per minute race start. For comparison, I can barely sustain 26 strokes per minute during the previous local racing event. I've also known rowers who scan their bodies for muscle distribution to come up with a personalized training plan. If something can be quantified as numbers, they will be, and if some numbers can be optimized, they surely will be.
But I've also experienced the opposite in rowing. The coach would tell us to not worry about split time, and not look at the power curve. It's better to slow down and focus on the form and technique. We sometimes row with eyes closed to develop the feeling for the boat. We've taken "ghost" strokes with zero power to understand the natural balance of the oars. Many things can't be measured but are important too: the style in our bladework, the spirit of the people in the boat, and the sense of community with the crew. You can't optimize those things because there is no objective good, better, best. There are more perspectives than goals, more art than engineering.
I keep reminding myself, numbers are a proxy, a map, an abstraction. They are Ceci n'est pas une pipe, but they are not the real pipe. Sometimes we need to turn away from the numbers to observe and understand reality they represent.
I would like to find the balance Coco Krume suggested in her book, knowing how far to push the Optimization game without losing perspectives, but more importantly, knowing when to unplug, for there are finer things in life we should enjoy, instead of optimize.