Against Values

Against Optimisation

Brian Klaas | Garden Of Forking Paths | 6th January 2025

“The new god is called Optimisation — and the disciples are legion. The problem is that there’s a trade-off being ignored. Rather than a demon to be slayed by a McKinsey exorcism, slack is required for robustness. From modern systems to our individual lives, we are over-optimised, courting disaster because we are deliberately slicing away the sinews that make ourselves and our world sturdier” (4,000 words)

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The Values Gap

Scrupulous Pessimism | 5th January 2025

Any talk of “shared values” between the US and other Western nations is cliché, not truth. In many ways, the US is an outlier: Americans are exceptionally desensitised to violent crime. Much of the developed West has a “safety-first mentality”; Americans are social Darwinists. On religion, they are more likely to identify with Erdogan’s Turkey than the “desert of godlessness that is modern Europe” (2,800 words)

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