You can’t optimize your way to being a good person
We’ve been told that the meaning of life is self-actualisation, to achieve some perfect state of mental health and productivity. Don’t commit until you have perfect control. But I think that way of thinking will backfire. Because the end point of trying to control everything is you become like a machine: emotionally detached, hyper-productive, supe... See more
I was reading Byung-Chul Han go on about how there is sort of a cult of authenticity these days, that you should be true to yourself, and this, to him, is pretty narcisstic and consumerist type behavior. And I have complicated feelings about that claim, so let me think this through.
First of all, to be clear, Han’s pros... See more
Henrik Karlssonsubstack.comSo this is what’s happened to the world: optimization trumps human preference. The people who want to win the argument are effectively prepared to ignore human truths to preserve the integrity of the artificial model.