“Constantly trying to optimize—maximize user engagement, minimize customer wait time, find the ideal values for some complex function so a computer could translate between two languages or recognize faces or categorize images. Tiny granular steps in the right direction.
She had, at one point, wrapped up the whole of her life in such a philosophy, believed wholeheartedly there was a way to optimize every day, an ideal way to arrange tasks on her calendar. There was a cost function that could be applied to every decision and if only she could find it, she could solve it.
She could live perfectly.
But optimal wasn't the same as perfect, was it? Perfect
implied so much more; it encapsulated some completeness that optimal dared not touch.”