Optimal Illusions, Coco Krumme
Optimal Illusions, Coco Krumme
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Optimal Illusions
The False Promise of Optimization

Author: Coco Krumme

Narrator: Coco Krumme

Unabridged: 6 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 09/12/2023


Synopsis

How optimization took over the world and the urgent case for a new approach

Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained?

Optimal Illusions traces the fascinating history of optimization from its roots in America’s founding principles to its modern manifestations, found in colorful stories of oil tycoons, wildlife ecologists, Silicon Valley technologists, lifestyle gurus, sugar beet farmers, and poker players. Optimization is now deeply embedded in the technologies and assumptions that have come to comprise not only our material reality but what we make of it.

Coco Krumme’s work in mathematical modeling has made her acutely aware of optimization’s overreach. Streamlined systems are less resilient and more at risk of failure. They limit our options and narrow our perspectives. The malaise of living in an optimized society can feel profoundly inhumane. Optimal Illusions exposes the sizable bargains we have made in the name of optimization and asks us to consider what comes next.

About The Author

Coco Krumme is an applied mathematician and writer. After completing her doctorate at MIT and working in technology, she founded a scientific consultancy and moved into a cabin on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, where she now resides.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Miranda on September 11, 2023

⭐️⭐️⭐️I was very excited when I got this ARC as the limits and failures of Mathematical optimization is a topic I have a lot of interest in, and the idea behind this book has a lot of promise. Unfortunately, I found the book lacked something in the execution. It felt rushed and scatterbrained, like......more

Goodreads review by Christopher on November 01, 2023

Really a 2.5. I so so so wanted to like this book, and I feel like it has a finger on something pulsing through our society, but my god it was a mess. Nice insightful anecdotes and nuggets were lost in a narrative that whiplashed between an impressive collection of stories that didn’t all quite hang......more

Goodreads review by Blake on October 22, 2023

Wow. Really good. A careful consideration of the world of “optimal everything” that we are creating and the good and bad that comes with it.......more

Goodreads review by Jack on August 04, 2024

Really good ideas but at times I felt lacked cohesion.......more

Goodreads review by Geoff on October 28, 2023

Important analysis of our American penchant to seek optimization in every facet of our lives and society. Both positive and negative impacts are discussed at length with the author's' personal experience blended into her story.......more


Quotes

Praise for Optimal Illusions:

“Provocative, brisk and refreshingly nontechnical” —Wall Street Journal

“A fascinating book, both deeply researched and deeply felt, Optimal Illusions is an elegy to all we’ve sacrificed to the religion of efficiency and economies of scale. But it is also a quietly hopeful guide to the more human, interdependent, imperfect yet uplifting world that might come next.” —Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

“Combining her training as a mathematician with a keen critical eye, Coco Krumme provides a deep and arresting look into the outsized role of optimization in our everyday lives. An incredibly timely book!” —Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and A World Without Email

“Are you tired of excess rationalism and optimization? Do you suspect there is something more to life? If so, Optimal Illusions is your preferred guide to some fascinating and more robust new perspectives.” —Tyler Cowen, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Stagnation