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Awesome post Jeremy and I am going rift off of it. You did not even get to blue print and Bryan Johnson! Optimization or as you put it edging is the control agenda - our want manifested in control of the present to achieve a narrowly defined future outcome: future longevity, future happiness...whatever. This should bring liberation but only brings enslavement as all the control agenda brings is suffering aka Buddhism 101. To bring in some statistical jargon, the optimizing ilk have been overfitting their models of behavior and thus only achieve a local maxima and don't realize the sacrifice of the global maxima they create. That is to say their endless optimizing actually limits their potential because of the endless opportunity costs of adhering to rigid routines to achieve a performance gain but yet they miss all the attempts to actually perform because they are only practicing and not actually performing. Remember when Michael Jordan scored 44ish points after having the stomach flu from a pizza the night before a basketball game. No edging there, just performing. Back to statistics, the global maxima is only achieved if you can breakout of your ruts and explore the entire parameter space, not optimizing a small locality within it

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Oh man, Eric. I loved this additional riff. And appreciate that you liked the post. I love the statistical take on it, too, which is something I had a feeling you’d offer up to the readers here. Man, this made my morning to read! Thank you!

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