Is Optimization...a Bad Thing?

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Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Welcome to The Dave Chang Show.

Dave Chang (0:37)

I'm your host, Dave Chang. We're joined with Christopher Yang, producer David, and today we're going to be doing a MOIF, My Opinion is Fact. We'll talk about optimization as an inappropriate dinner conversation with some dinner guests. And trust me, you're going to stay tuned for that. And I'm going to make in sujibi, hand-torn noodles. If you haven't tasted it before, it is wonderful. And I'm going to make it with a little bit of salt, but if you haven't tasted it before, it is one of the great dishes of all time. So stay tuned.

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Optimization. I don't even know if that is a word that anyone actually uses but it's the best word we've used to sort of encompass sort of the phrase, the movement towards efficiency and hacking or making things leaner. I don't know, what else would you say?

Chris Ying (2:05)

I mean, it's the whole world of life hacking, life maxing.

Dave Chang (2:09)

All the shit that's on your algorithm.

Chris Ying (2:11)

Disruption, all of the stuff.

Dave Chang (2:14)

Everything to make you up better, more effective, to make your life optimal.

Chris Ying (2:21)

To get the most out of life.

Dave Chang (2:24)

We're obsessed with it, right? We all are. That's so much of culture, even before social media has been about making things better. It's like Moore's Law, right? Which was about transistors and how it grows exponentially year after year. It's like, we're on this march towards making everything better, faster, cheaper, et cetera.

But we've been talking about this for some time, so we're just going to talk about it here. What if eliminating all the things that get eliminated from the efficiency, the sort of the acid that is like rational, logical thought, all the absurd, dumb shit, what if that is the whole point? We're going to be talking about how hard work and repetition is where you develop the skills and an appreciation for what you're doing, especially in crafts like cooking, where I constantly think about, you can't download knowledge. Clearly, you can, but it's that platitude. The journey is the process, that is everything that we're avoiding. And maybe the problem is all the help you're getting, all the how-to videos, the books, the instruction manuals, all that shit works.

Chris Ying (3:41)

Of course.

Dave Chang (3:42)

And that's the problem.

Chris Ying (3:43)

Yeah. You can skip straight to the instructional part, the GPS, the spell check, all of that stuff.

Dave Chang (3:50)

I'm going to extrapolate this, and I've been talking about this for some time in the world of food where everything that is experiential, things that are ephemeral, things that the reason you're going to spend X amount of dollars at a sushi ya by somebody that's been doing it for 50 years and there's only five seats at the counter. It's a very ephemeral thing. The thing that made that so unscalable is actually the thing that's driving the popularity because you want to eat expertise, right? And that's the things that we're valuing the most. You want to value years and years of hard earned experience that no one else can have, right? We want the thing that no one else can have. That is the most valuable commodity right now, which is ironic to me in this world of AI and optimization.

I think I'm actually weirdly optimistic that the experience, when I say the absurd, it's all the things that are meaningless and stupid, the things that we routinely try to eliminate, that is going to be the thing that is the real currency moving forward.

Chris Ying (4:54)

It's what makes the experiences valuable.

Dave Chang (4:57)

I don't want to sound like a crazy person, and I am going to sound like a crazy person saying this. But by removing everything that is hard, a reminder of suffering, a reminder of pain and toil and enduring hardships, we're fucking everything up.