How ‘hyperselection’ is making modern life efficient, pleasant – and boring
Are we optimising too much?
Hyperselection is a phenomenon that is making modern life more efficient, pleasant, but also increasingly boring. It refers to the tendency of competition and our ability to identify and optimize success to result in repeated selection for the same characteristics. This is exemplified by the modern music industry, where popular songs are optimized to follow certain formulas due to the pressure from streaming platforms.
As a result, songs sound similar, leading to a lack of variety and creativity. This hyperselection process is not limited to music, but also extends to various aspects of our lives, making them more predictable and sterile. In professional football, teams follow successful tactics, leading to similar styles of play. In academia, scientists are encouraged to publish easily conductable research rather than taking risks.
Urban environments also suffer from hyperselection, with successful commercial establishments being replicated, leading to a lack of diversity. While hyperselection has led to many improvements in safety, cleanliness, and efficiency, it also has costs. One of these is the loss of adaptive variance, which is crucial for human adaptation and psychological wellbeing.
Sanitized environments may reduce the microbial diversity needed for our bodies, and experiences of difficulty and failure can help develop coping skills. Additionally, AI could accelerate hyperselection by continuously learning and optimizing based on successful patterns. This could lead to a world where everything feels increasingly alike, despite the abundance of information.
Therefore, the key is not to reject optimization, but to recognize and preserve adaptive variance as a design principle in various aspects of life.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
