[GavinMcG]

You seem to be equating problem-solving with optimization, or a drive towards improvement with a drive towards perfection.

No doubt the effort to solve problems and improve one's self and circumstances have been powerful forces behind progress. But arguably, a focus on optimization and perfection can be forces that prevent the kind of progress you praise.

[Rescis]

I feel comfortable equating problem solving with optimization, for while we are still living outside of a utopia, any beneficial system that less than perfectly efficient is causing suffering (from an opportunity cost perspective).

Similarly, I feel comfortable treating a drive towards improvement the same I do a drive towards perfection, since without an end goal (perfection), you can't have improvement, since you cannot say if what you're doing is bringing you closer or farther from 'good'.

I do agree with you though that an individual can focus on hyper optimizing their personal life to the point where it is not good from a societal perspective; however, that's is not what I gathered the article was arguing ("Enough of our mania to be the best and the most, he says. It’s time to content ourselves with being average.")

[GavinMcG]

You're right that you need some measure to judge improvement, but you can have a vision of perfection without making it a goal in itself.

Optimiziation may be a subset of problem solving, but surely you'd agree that a problem can be solved even without the situation being brought to optimality?

[TeMPOraL]

Optimization is not just about reaching optimal state - which for all practical problems is impossible, given both the constraints of physical reality and the fuzzy definition of optimum humans can conceptualize. Optimization is a process of determining what the optimum is and moving the system towards that point.

[Retra]

If perfection is not a goal, how is it useful? And why call it perfection? I'd argue that you can have models without making them goals, but a model is not perfection unless it is also your primary goal. Perfection implies an optimal moral evaluation, and moral evaluation is always relative to a goal.