Optimal Illusions
The False Promise of Optimization
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Narrated by:
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Coco Krumme
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By:
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Coco Krumme
About this listen
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.
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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
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Doom Guy: Life in First Person is the long-awaited autobiography of gaming’s original rock star and the cocreator of DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein—some of the most recognizable and important titles in video game history. Credited with the invention of the first-person shooter, a genre that continues to dominate the market today, he is gaming royalty. Told in remarkable detail, a byproduct of his hyperthymesia, Romero recounts his storied career.
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Intimate stories of gaming history in First Person
- By Emyli on 07-28-23
By: John Romero
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Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
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Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
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Surveillance Valley
- The Secret Military History of the Internet
- By: Yasha Levine
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the Internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news - and the device on which you read it.
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Profound look at the internet and surveillance
- By stuartjash on 04-06-18
By: Yasha Levine
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Glow Kids
- How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
- By: Nicholas Kardaras PhD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.
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Fear Mongering - a modern day Mazes and Monsters
- By Veronica on 11-03-20
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Tesla
- Inventor of the Electrical Age
- By: W. Bernard Carlson
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius.
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A detailed examination of Tesla's work
- By Jean on 02-01-14
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The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide
- How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
- By: John Sonmez
- Narrated by: John Sonmez
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Technical knowledge alone isn't enough - increase your software development income by leveling up your soft skills Early in his software developer career, John Sonmez discovered that technical knowledge alone isn't enough to break through to the next income level - developers need "soft skills" like the ability to learn new technologies just in time, communicate clearly with management and consulting clients, negotiate a fair hourly rate, and unite teammates and coworkers in working toward a common goal.
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The Complete Bro-grammer's Career Guide
- By Leels on 09-18-19
By: John Sonmez
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Cybersecurity for Beginners
- By: Raef Meeuwisse
- Narrated by: Danny Eastman
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Companies that can use technology wisely and well are booming, companies that make bad or no technology choices collapse and disappear. The cloud, smart devices and the ability to connect almost any object to the internet are an essential landscape to use but are also fraught with new risks and dangers of a magnitude never seen before. Also featuring an alphabetical section at the back of the book to help you translate many of the main cybersecurity technical terms into plain, non-technical English.
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Not for IT ppl moving into security
- By keith on 03-25-18
By: Raef Meeuwisse
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Cyber Wars
- Hacks That Shocked the Business World
- By: Charles Arthur
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Cyber Wars gives you the dramatic inside stories of some of the world's biggest cyber attacks. These are the game-changing hacks that make organisations around the world tremble and leaders stop and consider just how safe they really are. Charles Arthur provides a gripping account of why each hack happened, what techniques were used, what the consequences were and how they could have been prevented. Cyber attacks are some of the most frightening threats currently facing business leaders, and this book provides a deep insight into understanding how they work.
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For the security professional and average joe
- By Quella on 01-11-19
By: Charles Arthur
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Tor Darknet Bundle (5 in 1) Master the Art of Invisibility (Bitcoins, Hacking, Kali Linux)
- By: Lance Henderson
- Narrated by: James C. Lewis
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The best five books on anonymity in existence! Want to surf the web anonymously? Cloak yourself in shadow on the Deep Web or The Hidden Wiki? I will show you how to become a ghost in the machine - leaving no tracks back to your ISP - whether on the Deep Web or regular Internet. This audiobook covers it all: encrypting your files, securing your PC, masking your Online footsteps with Tor, VPNs, Freenet, and bitcoins, and all while giving you peace of mind with total 100 percent anonymity.
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Technical deficiencies
- By Byzantine Technologies LLC on 07-16-19
By: Lance Henderson
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Prediction Machines
- The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible - driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
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Not sure what I was expecting, but underwhelmed
- By William J Brown on 09-27-18
By: Ajay Agrawal, and others
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Super Pumped
- The Battle for Uber
- By: Mike Isaac
- Narrated by: Holter Graham, Mike Isaac
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a pause-resisting story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic 12-month periods in American corporate history.
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A forced narrative and a bad version of Bad Blood
- By Benji on 09-09-19
By: Mike Isaac
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The Book of Satoshi
- The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto, 1st Edition
- By: Phil Champagne
- Narrated by: Stephanie Murphy
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The Book of Satoshi, the collected writings of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of the bitcoin. The foreword was written by Jeff Berwick.
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Great historic read that'll teach the blockchain
- By Peter Hanson on 05-19-16
By: Phil Champagne
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The Box
- How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
- By: Marc Levinson
- Narrated by: Adam Lofbomm
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.
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Fascinating Topic sometimes lost in minutiae
- By zombie64 on 07-15-14
By: Marc Levinson
What listeners say about Optimal Illusions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jim Nasium
- 10-19-23
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!
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-02-23
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.
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- Sarah Brown
- 12-02-23
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.
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- Mike
- 12-29-23
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”.
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- G Seath
- 11-21-23
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.
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