{"id":7970,"date":"2026-05-15T19:46:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T02:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7970"},"modified":"2026-05-15T19:46:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T02:46:56","slug":"tgfi-volume-555-optimizing-everything-is-foolish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2026\/05\/15\/tgfi-volume-555-optimizing-everything-is-foolish","title":{"rendered":"TGFI, Volume 555: optimizing everything is foolish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4396\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?resize=1200%2C1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/issachar-update-logo-wordswag.png?w=1680&amp;ssl=1 1680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\"><\/a>\n<\/p><p>You\u2019ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my&nbsp;way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list simple-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/12\/opinion\/decision-making-herbert-simon.html(New\">Your Decision Making Is All Wrong<\/a> (David Epstein, New York Times): \u201cIf in making decisions you are often guided by a search for the best, you are going about decision making all wrong \u2014 and you\u2019re also probably less happy for it. In an age of information and choice abundance, we assume we can find the best of everything if we look long and hard enough. Psychologists call that tendency maximizing. But searching for the best is the wrong goal. That is because searching is itself a cost, and most people forget to account for it. If you did, you would see that the optimal strategy isn\u2019t optimizing at all.\u2026 Maximizers tend to be less satisfied with their decisions and their lives. They are typically less happy, more prone to regret and more likely to compare themselves endlessly with others. Satisficers don\u2019t necessarily have low standards. Their standard is \u2018good enough for me\u2019 rather than \u2018the best out there,\u2019 and that makes it possible to feel satisfied with their choices, instead of haunted by the ones they didn\u2019t make.\u201d&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/12\/opinion\/china-power-trump-xi-beijing.html\">China Is Much Weaker Than It Seems. That\u2019s the Problem.<\/a> (Bret Stephens, New York Times): \u201c&nbsp;\u2018Business debt has doubled since 2019, while revenues are only 30 percent higher,\u2019 reports Fortune. This economic house of cards rests, if you\u2019ll forgive the mixed metaphor, on a foundation of sand: an aging and declining work force, net emigration, widespread youth unemployment, plummeting foreign direct investment, an arbitrary rule of law that terrifies business leaders, repeated purges of the military that project far more paranoia than confidence and a truculent foreign policy that does little more than alarm and alienate China\u2019s neighbors.\u2026 Rising nations, which is what China was under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, have the luxury of being able to bide their time. Declining nations don\u2019t. It tends to make them more inclined to gamble with their future. It\u2019s why Putin invaded Ukraine after he realized the country was moving inexorably into the West\u2019s orbit. It\u2019s also why Xi will be powerfully tempted to seize Taiwan by invasion or blockade despite the enormous risks it poses not only to the world\u2019s economy but also to his&nbsp;own.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Somewhat related: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/09\/opinion\/ai-china-america-race.html\">Why China Is So Much Less Scared of A.I.<\/a> (Jacob Dryer, New York Times): \u201cThe reality is that China and the United States are racing in different directions, because the two countries conceptualize A.I. very differently. Americans want to create the most powerful technology humans have ever known. In the quest for superintelligence, the U.S. government is encouraging private firms to move full speed ahead, regulation be damned. Under the very tightest regulation, by contrast, the Chinese want to make A.I. more practical and embedded in society, more carefully selecting how it is deployed and used by the population.\u2026 In that way, as China exports those A.I. models, it will be exporting Chinese governance as well, with all of the safety, abundance, surveillance and embedded hierarchies that entails. That\u2019s why the difference between these two countries in the A.I. race matters so&nbsp;much.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/09\/opinion\/artificial-intelligence-consciousness-richard-dawkins.html\">The Atheist and the Machine God<\/a> (Ross Douthat, New York Times): \u201cThere is no obvious escape from mystery here. If you bite the bullet and just say that Claudia has already attained consciousness, then that implies we somehow built a conscious mind without having any idea of how consciousness works or where it comes from. That\u2019s science with extremely spooky characteristics: Like Kevin Costner summoning baseball ghosts to the Iowa cornfield, we put up a material architecture and the mysterious \u2018I\u2019 magically appeared. Alternatively, if you say that A.I. isn\u2019t conscious but merely capable, then the question of why <em>we<\/em> experience reality through consciousness \u2014 the internal \u2018I,\u2019 the sense of personal identity and will \u2014 becomes much more difficult to answer. If consciousness isn\u2019t necessary for capability, then presumably evolution should default to zombies.\u2026 As certain philosophers have argued, this harmony between the psychological and the physical seems more much likely to appear in a universe where consciousness is fundamental, where matter isn\u2019t everything and Mind is where things start. In which case maybe the achievement of Claude, or Claudia if you prefer, is to show us what intelligence might look like in the materialist\u2019s universe \u2014 even as our own consciousness indicates that <em>this<\/em> universe is a much, much stranger place.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I really appreciated this&nbsp;essay.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/china-persecution-christians-underground-church-ezra-jin\">China vs God<\/a> (Frannie Block, The Free Press): \u201cI\u2019ve obtained hours of interviews with Jin that the Drexels recorded in September 2025, a month before he was arrested. I\u2019ve viewed never-before-seen footage of Chinese police arresting Christians. I\u2019ve listened to audio of police interrogations, and read nearly a dozen testimonies of those who witnessed firsthand the arrests and raids on churches. More than half a dozen people who have been imprisoned or had family members imprisoned by the Chinese regime have shared their stories with me. \u2018A government moves from authoritarianism into totalitarianism when it wants to infiltrate and direct the most intimate parts of yourself, of your community, of your family,\u2019 Bill told me. \u2018What we\u2019re seeing now,\u2019 he continued, \u2018is a renewed desire from the state under Chairman Xi, basically, to engineer souls.\u2019&nbsp;\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/11\/opinion\/adhd-autism-depression-diagnoses.html\">We\u2019re Thinking About Mental Health Diagnoses All Wrong<\/a> (Awais Aftab, New York Times): \u201cIn my practice, I routinely see patients who have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety by one clinician, bipolar disorder by another and post-traumatic stress disorder by a third, at different points in their lives. They arrive confused and frustrated, asking: What disorder do I _really_ have? The honest answer is: all of them and none of them. Each of these labels can capture something useful and inform treatment options, but none of them do justice to the dimensional and dynamic nature of mental illness. Your mental health problems are not caused by a simple thing that you either have or don\u2019t have. They are patterns shaped by who we are as people and that, in turn, shape the people we become. This is a more complicated story than \u2018chemical imbalance\u2019 or \u2018brain disease.\u2019 But it is closer to the&nbsp;truth.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The author is a psychiatrist at Case Western.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/11\/opinion\/israel-palestinians-sexual-violence.html\">The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians<\/a> (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are. My reporting for this article is based on conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces. I also spoke to family members, investigators, officials and others.\u2026 How does this kind of violence happen? Decades of covering conflict has taught me that a combination of dehumanization and impunity can propel people into a Hobbesian state of nature. I\u2019ve encountered this drift toward savagery in killing fields from Congo to Sudan to Myanmar, and I think it also roughly explains how American soldiers came to sexually abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The blunt reality is that when there are no consequences, we humans are capable of immense depravity toward those we are taught to scorn as subhuman.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A disturbing read which I, for the record, find largely plausible even if certain lurid details wind up not withstanding scrutiny. This isn\u2019t rooted in thinking that Israel is any way worse than other nations. I think Israel is far more praiseworthy than her rivals \u2014 and I also think that praiseworthy nations can have very dark corners. This op-ed set off a firestorm on the internet, and some noteworthy responses follow:<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/how-the-new-york-times-laundered-a-conspiracy\">How \u2018The New York Times\u2019 Laundered a Conspiracy<\/a> (Matti Friedman and Dan Senor, The Free Press): \u201cWhen you read the piece, you have to use your own compass to decide which charges could plausibly be true and which charges come from the world of conspiratorial, anti-Israel fantasy. I think there is a plausible reason for concern about sexual assaults of prisoners. I don\u2019t think we can dismiss every account of sexual assaults against Palestinian detainees. But the piece kind of goes off the deep end by being credulous about charges that are much, much harder to believe. After all, the facilities are equipped with cameras. There are commanders, there are lawyers.\u2026 It doesn\u2019t mean we shouldn\u2019t investigate credible allegations of sexual assault. I remain concerned about the people in charge of detention facilities and law enforcement in Israel. I do not have complete faith that the right people are running this, to be honest, or that we\u2019re pursuing every allegation of misdeeds by our own soldiers.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>This is a debunking of the Kristof piece, but it honestly seems to agree with the substance of what Kristof said. I don\u2019t know why people find it so hard to say, \u201cPeople who are \u2018on my side\u2019 sometimes do really vile things.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/israel-prison-claims-smear\">The Paper Trail of Nicholas Kristof\u2019s Smear<\/a> (Haviv Rettig Gur, The Free Press): \u201cThe Israeli Prison Service has a reputation for incompetence. There have been cases of abuse, even famous cases of prisoners abusing female Israeli guards. We know, too, that all prison systems struggle with the problem: New York prisons face huge numbers of abuse claims. Prisons are not nice places, wherever they are in the world. So mistreatment of prisoners by Israeli guards isn\u2019t merely possible, it\u2019s almost certain, as in any prison system anywhere in the world. And conditions were especially problematic in recent years. October 7 and the ensuing war sent thousands of Palestinian detainees into the prisons, together with undertrained reservist guards in the early months\u2014guards who had seen Hamas\u2019s videos gleefully documenting massacres that the new prisoners had committed.\u2026 And it must be said, as I\u2019ve said before: Neither National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems interested in fixing it. Our leaders do not seem to care about the simple breakdown of discipline that these abuses represent, the kind of breakdown we saw again and again with the incidents of looting in Gaza and in the early cases of prisoner abuse that came to&nbsp;light.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Again, a debunking that contests details but concedes the basic&nbsp;point.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/andrewsullivan.substack.com\/p\/everything-is-legitimate-to-do-everything-6ac\">\u201cEverything Is Legitimate To Do! Everything!\u201d<\/a> (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): \u201c\u2026the context for claims of Israeli excesses is obvious: a traumatized Israeli psyche that has radicalized even more during this war, in which inhibitions around hating the enemy have obviously loosened. And the man in charge of the prison system is Itamar Ben-Gvir \u2014 a far-right Kahanist, Jewish supremacist. He\u2019s as close to a neofascist as you can get. His view of Arabs, let alone suspected terrorists, is, shall we say, not great. So a recent Abu Ghraib-like case in the system he presides over is worth looking at. A prisoner in Sde Teiman, Israel\u2019s torture and prison camp, was handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten, tased, and sodomized with a broom handle, ending up in the hospital with broken ribs and a ruptured bowel. The incident was even caught on videotape, but the grisly details were concealed behind IDF shields.\u201d&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/marie-gluesenkamp-perez-sea-lion-issue\">The Congresswoman Who Wants to Shoot Sea Lions<\/a> (Will Rahn, The Free Press): \u201c\u2026By the 1950s, there were only about 10,000 sea lions left. And so, in the 1970s, they implemented something called the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). And the great news was that they recovered, going up to about 300,000 of them. In fact, they are now invasive in the Columbia River tributaries, where they were never historically dominant. The problem is that they are now really eviscerating native vulnerable and endangered salmon and steelhead populations. So we basically have an invasive species consuming an endangered species.\u2026 I think we clearly need to amend the MMPA to allow for more tribal control, and allow them or their designees to engage in lethal removal of sea lions in the Columbia River and its tributaries.\u201d&nbsp;<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>100% recommend this interview. A fascinating read.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Less Serious Things Which Also Interested\/Amused Glen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list simple-list\">\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/bub_gb_ufOZBzV878IC\/page\/36\/mode\/2up\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/bub_gb_ufOZBzV878IC\/page\/36\/mode\/2up\">original source of \u201clorem ipsum\u201d<\/a> \u2014 recommended by a friend.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/babylonbee.com\/news\/orthodox-star-wars-fans-prepare-to-celebrate-may-the-11th-be-with-you\">Orthodox Star Wars Fans Prepare To Celebrate \u2018May The 11th Be With You\u2019<\/a> \u2014 (Babylon Bee)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><b>Why Do You Send This&nbsp;Email?<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors \u201cwho understood the times and knew what Israel should do\u201d (1 Chron 12:32). In a similar way, we need to become wise people whose faith interacts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may continue the tradition of Issachar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><b>Disclaimer<\/b><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey\u2019s agenda and we are not about the elephant\u2019s agenda \u2014 we are about the Lamb\u2019s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass <a href=\"http:\/\/econlog.econlib.org\/archives\/2011\/06\/the_ideological.html\">the ideological Turing test<\/a> and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say \u201cI agree\u201d or \u201cI disagree\u201d until I can say \u201cI understand\u201d) and may at times share articles that have a strong partisan bias simply because I find the article stimulating. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with everything an author says in an article I mention, much less things the author has said in other articles (although if I strongly disagree with something in the article I\u2019ll usually mention it). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent.\n\nAlso, remember that I\u2019m not reporting news \u2014 I\u2019m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There\u2019s a lot happening in the world that\u2019s not making an appearance here because I haven\u2019t found stimulating articles written about it.\n\nIf this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up <a href=\"https:\/\/theglendavis.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>. You can also <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/category\/links\">view the archives<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2026\/05\/15\/tgfi-volume-555-optimizing-everything-is-foolish\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cTGFI, Volume 555: optimizing everything is foolish\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[219,204,125,161,148,296,138,247],"class_list":["post-7970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-atheism","tag-china","tag-global-christianity","tag-israel","tag-mental-health","tag-religious-freedom","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-24y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7973,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7970\/revisions\/7973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}