Philosophy

What is worth optimizing?

We know more about how to optimize our lives than perhaps any generation before us.

But optimization has an uncomfortable prerequisite:

You have to choose the objective.

And choosing is harder than it sounds, because we make tradeoffs constantly, whether or not we notice them.

Money can buy freedom while the pursuit of money consumes time.
Ambition can build an extraordinary future while making the present feel insufficient.
Achievement can improve our lives while continually moving the definition of enough.

Technology can help us optimize almost anything.

It cannot decide what is worth optimizing.

Ruvoa draws on several ways of thinking about that problem. Not as competing systems. As lenses.

Engineering asks: How do we optimize the system?
Science asks: What appears to be true?
Economics asks: How do we allocate scarce resources?
Finance asks: How do we make decisions under uncertainty?
Philosophy asks: What is actually worth pursuing?
Ancient wisdom asks: What happens when our happiness becomes attached to outcomes, possessions, status, or desire?

Ambition says tomorrow can be better.

Gratitude says today is already valuable.

A rich life needs both.

What are three things your past self desperately wanted that you now have, but barely notice?

One more thing is true whether or not we look at it: you don’t get every possible life. Choosing one path means not choosing another.

The question is not whether your life contains tradeoffs. It is:

Are you choosing them intentionally?

Ruvoa doesn’t tell you what a good life is.

It helps you discover what a good life means to you, and notice when the life you’re building drifts away from it.

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