No Mercy / No Malice: Optimization

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1:50At some point, optimizers fall prey to obsession, reducing life to a series of tasks and quantifiable outcomes while missing everything that matters. Optimization, as read by George Hahn.

2:13George Hahn:What gets measured gets managed is often misattributed to Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory. The full quote from business journalist Simon Calkin is a warning, not a promise. What gets measured gets managed, even when it's pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so. In other words, our mania for measurement can obscure what matters most. Consider the popularity of health and fitness apps and the personal optimization trend those technologies enable. To a point, the more data we collect on ourselves, the better able we may be to improve our lives.

3:03George Hahn:But metrics aren't the arbiters of living well, nor is optimization life's end goal. I believe this trend isn't about optimizing life. It reflects a growing obsession that's consuming life's purpose and meaning. The digital economy has created a winner-take-most ecosystem. Life, America, is exceptional for the top tier and increasingly anxious for everyone else. This K-shaped life offering awesome or anxiety fuels a maxing culture. How do we look? How much protein do we consume? How well do we sleep? How many books do we read? Etc. The optimization and gamification of life has created a hunger games we're all playing all the time.

3:57George Hahn:As journalist Nitsu Abebe wrote in the New York Times in October, the concept of maxing comes from 1940s academic game theory, but it's been repurposed by online communities to describe a strategy for relentless optimization where balance goes to die. The language that comes from this layer of the Internet has a mechanistic, game-like aura, as if life were mostly just a web of tactics and hacks and mutual manipulation. According to clinical psychologist Catherine Houlihan, the optimization mindset has many of the hallmarks of perfectionism. Some commonalities? constantly pursuing high standards such that falling short of a goal is seen as failure, being preoccupied with results to the point of worry or rumination, constantly measuring performance to an obsessive degree, avoiding tasks if we fear we won't be perfect, slipping into binary thinking like your diet is either healthy, perfect, optimal, or unhealthy, imperfect, suboptimal.

5:15George Hahn:We don't yet have much research about how adopting an optimization mindset might affect mental health and well-being, Houlihan wrote, but the negative effects of perfectionism are well established. A 1923 meta-analysis of 121 studies found that when perfectionism takes the form of obsessive fear of failure, replaying mistakes, tying self-worth to performance, etc., it correlates meaningfully with anxiety, OCD, and depression in young people. In economic terms, optimization means getting the greatest return on your investment. Investors, however, aren't perfectionists. They're pragmatists who operate with an understanding of the Pareto Principle, which states that for many outcomes, roughly 80 % of the results come from 20 % of the effort.

6:16George Hahn:When applied to the personal investments we make in our own fitness, health, and longevity, the lesson is that we make the biggest gains going from zero to one, but there's a point, likely around 80%, where the efficiency frontier begins to collapse. If you don't exercise at all, getting moving four times a week will confer significant benefits. If you're a gym rat, however, working out every day versus four times a week yields diminishing returns. Brian Johnson, an entrepreneur whose philosophy is don't die, spends$2 million a year optimizing for longevity. Each day, he tracks hundreds of biomarkers, adheres to a strict vegan diet where every calorie that enters his body must fight for its life, uses shockwave and red light therapies, and hangs out in his home sauna and hyperbaric chamber.

7:20George Hahn:He ingests a stack of prescription drugs and dozens of supplements, and exercises up to 90 minutes a day, without rest days. Bedtime is 8.30 p.m. Sleep temperature is strictly regulated at 65 degrees to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and he wakes up between 4.30 a.m. and 5 a.m. without an alarm. My Pivot co-host Kara Swisher, who interviewed Johnson for her CNN series Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever, observed that Johnson has an obsession with measurement. I'd add he has an aversion to L-I-V-I-N as Matthew McConaughey famously put it in Dazed and Confused Our obsession with metrics, says journalist Derek Thompson is akin to a modern religion that's making us miserable Modern life is awash in statistics, Thompson wrote in March Often the quantification of modern life makes us play the games we can easily measure rather than the games we deeply value.

8:35George Hahn:When we do this, we're succumbing to value capture, according to University of Utah philosophy professor C.T. Nguyen. Value capture occurs when an agent's values are rich and subtle, Nguyen wrote in 2024. They enter a social environment that presents simplified, typically quantified, versions of those values, and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Some examples. We adhere to dietary guidelines to improve our health, but fixate on BMI such that the metric replaces the original goal. We pursue education to learn, but chase GPA at the expense of knowledge We use social media to connect, but we come to value likes and other parasocial metrics over meaningful relationships Metrics are useful because they compress information And they are dangerous because they compress information, Nguyen told Thompson It's not that these metrics aren't measuring something real and that they aren't objectively tracking something that we want to know about.

9:55George Hahn:It's that they speak so loudly that they threaten to drown out other nearby qualities that are also incredibly valuable but are harder to measure. In October 2002, with only three months to live, frequent guest Warren Zivon appeared on David Letterman's show for the final time. The musician retained his dark wit, joking that not visiting a doctor for more than two decades was one of those phobias that really didn't pay off. In a more serious moment, Letterman asked Zivon if he had any insights about life to share. I really always enjoyed myself, Zeevon said, but it's more valuable now. You're reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute of it, playing with the guys and being with the kids and everything.

10:51George Hahn:Zeevon's answer is memorable. Enjoy Every Sandwich became the title of a posthumous tribute album because he articulated his life's purpose rather than the metrics he'd registered along the way. I frequently encounter people who ask about my diet and fitness routine. It's simple. I eat a diet that mostly hits my targets for calories and macros, try to get a good night's sleep, and exercise regularly. As someone who's obsessed with data, I code as an optimizer. I am not. I work out harder so I can drink more. The first thing I do when I arrive in Los Angeles, if you know, you know, is go to In-N-Out Burger.

11:38George Hahn:I often order, gasp, dessert, especially if I'm with my boys. I regularly stay up too late talking to friends back in the States. Two nights ago, after interviewing Secretary Clinton for a live pod in NYC, I came home, ingested edibles, binge-watched season three of Euphoria, and washed down chocolate-covered almonds lifted from the minibar at the Faena Hotel earlier this week with two Peronis. A great night. If there's a pattern, it's this. I'm health conscious 80 % of the time so I can devour the other 20 % and create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts The question isn't will I live longer but will I live better?

12:32George Hahn:Answer? Yes Research supports this Dieters who adhere to rigid meal plans are more likely to experience mood disturbances than those who don't Flexible dieters are less moody and more likely to reduce their BMI. Harvard happiness researcher Sean Aker tested multiple variables, background, income, activities, and sleep, and found that social connection was the strongest predictor of happiness, suggesting that a late night with friends is better for your health than a perfect sleep score. Consuming alcohol in moderation is associated with higher death rates But a large-scale study of 1.5 million people Found that moderate drinkers report higher life satisfaction than abstainers Then there's the work of Bronnie Ware A palliative care nurse who collected the regrets of her dying patients They shared about not living their truth wishing they'd worked less, expressed their feelings, kept in touch with friends, and been happier.

13:47George Hahn:Nobody said they'd wish they'd done a better job optimizing. I gave my eldest son a ring that he wears as a necklace. The inscription comes from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, a 1943 novella about friendship, loneliness, loss, and love. What is essential is invisible to the eye. My work and life are narrowing, distilling to a few goals. One of them is to prepare my son for others. Many things I do don't advance that goal and some things undermine it. I'm a work in progress, i.e., suboptimal. when I'm gone if I've accomplished this goal my sons will have among other things receipts in the form of grief proof that they loved deeply as Nicole Avant former U.S.

14:50George Hahn:ambassador and film producer wrote in her memoir Think You'll Be Happy the boys won't remember my VO2 max they won't know my sleep score or my macro splits What they'll carry with them is me, the man who showed up, imperfectly, at the dinner table, at their games, and in countless fleeting moments that didn't register on any dashboard. The metrics were never the point. The sandwiches we shared were.

15:28George Hahn:Life is so rich.

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