Ambiguity (self-optimization pt. 4)

The most obvious problem with optimization is "who (or what) are you optimizing into?" First you must know yourself, then have a mission with little goals along the way allowing you to hack productivity. But if you are in a rush to gain career capital for survival or to earn freedom, your mission is likely not your own, thus requiring disciplined willpower to pursue. This opens us to problems with willpower and subjective truth shaped objective relations. More problematically, optimization reduces for efficiency, in which case there may be no space left for the messy ambiguity of the human soul. 

0:00 Intro (Recap of the last 3 episodes) 

5:03 Bildung, career capital (David Epstein, Cal Newport, Richard Sennett, Robert Jackall) 

8:54 the fickle self, marshmallows, and unreliable willpower  (George Ainslie, Daniel Kahneman) 

15:58 Just the tips: Zettelkasten (Sonke Ahrens, Niklas Luhmann) 

18:23 Stoic vs. Epicurean 

22:11 Subject/Object, Over indexing, and ambiguity as human (Simone De Beauvoir, Douglas Rushkoff)