moneyball

Applying universal logic gives our experiences a certain weight and our lives a certain order. I assume this is why we’re so drawn to recasting our life stories into tidy narratives and lessons to be shared with others. But in doing this we risk underestimating chaos, nuance, idiosyncrasy, and the occasional dose of self-delusion.

If you go too far off the beaten path of algorithmic consistency, you risk never being heard. You may never get enough cultural momentum to exist in any meaningful way. That is a real problem. But if you're too good at algorithmic optimization, you risk building a large audience without saying anything particularly original or important. Not to men... See more

“Wellness culture encourages people to view their health as a perpetual work in progress and to be constantly monitoring how they feel — two things that can heighten anxiety and preoccupation with illness,” she explains. “Rather than being able to appreciate the health and capabilities that we have, we are encouraged to always strive for more, to b... See more

I believe the “ tyranny of numbers ” has atrophied people’s abilities to listen to their body. Numbers can be helpful, but often cause me to lose the plot. I’ve found that I feel better when I let my body tell me what I really want, instead of the non-actionable anxiety associated with metrics.

There’s an irony here: Algorithms were once believed to untether us from the masses and offer paths for personalization. But “For You” is not about pushing the limits of our artistic palates, but a device to serve us what the platform wants us to be satisfied with, herding us into perfectly predictable siloes that can be targeted with more “precise... See more

The data informs and influences us, but we choose based on the totality of our experience

Overtime we’ve begun to treat this nuance and ambiguity as friction and something to program out. Computers don’t like it. Algorithms can’t categorize it. So we remove it.

Yet we so desperately need this “in between” and neither “yes” nor “no” thinking.

Are we undertaking the project of breaking down big giant ideas like ‘i feel weird and alone sometimes’ or ‘Why does life feel like its passing me by’ into smaller more manageable ideas because that’s a helpful framework to think about them or because its a helpful market framework to sell weird little solutions like fuckin headspace and better hel... See more