When Optimization Is a Trap

"The study, which tracked the movements of 100,000 anonymized mobile-phone users over six months, had found that human mobility is surprisingly predictable: Our days default to simple, repeatable patterns."

"“There was something very programmed about the way I was living,” he told me. If his movements were that predictable, where did that leave his free will?"

"That night, as he lay in bed, he started thinking about how the structure of people's lives determines the outcomes of their lives. His life's structure had become disconcertingly rigid. He didn't like the sense that, day to day, he was reading a story he'd already read."

"But he couldn't get the human-mobility study off his mind. The new hip bar is exactly where a computer would expect me to go, he thought. So he decided to design an algorithm to help him break from his routine."

Max Hawkins felt trapped by a highly optimized routine: waking at a fixed time, making a single preferred pour-over, biking a precise route to work, working eight hours, and spending evenings in familiar places. Despite a good job and social life, he felt something was off. While reading a study tracking 100,000 anonymized mobile-phone users over six months, he learned that human mobility defaults to simple, repeatable patterns. This predictability unsettled him because it suggested his movements might be determined by structure rather than choice. He began thinking about how life structure shapes outcomes and decided to design an algorithm to help him break from his routine.

Read at The Atlantic