Optimal Illusions

The False Promise of Optimization

By: Coco Krumme

Narrated by: Coco Krumme

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.

©2023 Coco Krumme (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“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

Riveting storytelling and sharp social criticism

Krumme has the rare gift of being a great writer and storyteller as well as a math whiz. Her experience in the tech industry and her academic work as a mathematician make her optimally (haha) positioned to understand the crisis of optimization from the inside. But unlike most Silicon Valley insiders, she actually sees that something is going wrong and is able to explain it -- not just "in layman's terms" but in beautiful prose and by means of vivid portraits of fascinating corners of contemporary American life. I am usually skeptical of authors as audiobook narrators but Krumme's narration is lovely!

Thoughtful and Insightful

This book expands systems thinking in a direction that is intuitive yet difficult to express. The author did an excellent job converting why it's not optimal for everything to be ceaselessly optimized, combining case studies, analysis, and discussion. She is also a terrific narrator!

excellent partial portrait of the times

I highly recommend this book in a context of it being a memoir of a scattered and confused person in scattered and confusing times. that is not intended to be a criticism or a left-handed compliment. life is not easy and it is no small thing that the author has managed to survive. as a book to generate questions and to study cultural psychology it is a wonderful book. it is not however and exhaustively researched interdisciplinary analysis of technical or historical topics. this book illustrates the tragedy of how Americans are simply uneducated and profoundly ignorant of the rest of the world and anything from history, regardless of their paychecks, social status, educational degrees.

A resonating reflection on the overapplication of optimization

The tie to optimization as more than a tool or method and as a part of our morality, culture, and history is something I’ve not heard expressed before. While at times the author’s disillusionment comes through strongly, sometimes that level of disillusionment is necessary to create the distance from things that were once so close up as to be unnoticeable, and her reflection on the state of our work and lives and values and how they have not only shaped the past but are forming the future—these are both affirming and thought provoking to sit with.

My one gripe with this audio version is the lack of volume balancing. It means you have to listen to the whole thing louder than usual to catch the quieter words. But if you don’t get the audio version, get this in print. It’s not a long one.

Insightful and informative

Some rather lazy arguments made here but, as the author discloses at the end, this book is about narratives and story rather than a thorough examination. In that way, the author is no better than tech bros she dismantles. She just wants to sell us her “idea”.

Went to hammer school, now everything is a nail.

It’s not easy to write a book or to read it. For the performance a good clear microphone was used, that’s good. But, EVERY SENTeNce STaRts out LOUD and then fads to normal speech. This becomes very annoying, especially listening in the car as the soft end of the sentence is hard to hear. The book should be run through a dynamic compression to lessen this problem.

Optimization is seen by the author as an end to itself, it’s is not, but rather a tool to help the user get what they want, who ever they may be. To complain that a tool is the root of the problem and not the user is the most shallow understanding of what is going on.