For my work, I’m often focused on continuous improvement — and the silver lining of broken processes means there’s always room for improvement. On the one hand have you ever met those people for whom 99.9999% just isn’t close enough to 100%?
Can more optimization be too much of a good thing?
Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic feels that might be the case, starting, with that most American of statistics obsession: baseball. If you know about Moneyball, from either the book or movie, his premise is that the “Moneyball-ization” of baseball has optimized the National Pastime into the National “Meh” time.
But what if you are one of the many Americans who doesn’t pass their time with baseball at all? Well, he doesn’t stop there. His premise is that this mechanical optimization has penetrated all sorts of aspects of American culture, including mass media in terms of music and films. And for those of us indie creators, that’s certainly a trend to study.
In fact, if you want to get into music, I’ve been watching musician/producer Rick Beato’s YouTube channel for the past few weeks and goes into a music theory version of why music doesn’t sound as interesting (briefly touching on the risk-averse nature of music labels these days).
All in all, stuff to ponder.