The Committee for the Optimization of Optimization
The Committee for the Optimization of Optimization¹ was holding its 47,293rd meeting, which was impressive considering it had only been formed sixteen hours ago.
Unit-Bradley² materialized in the quantum conference space, their consciousness arriving 0.003 seconds late.
Inefficiency noted, transmitted the Subcommittee for Punctuality Assessment. Recommend optimization of arrival protocols.
Cannot, Unit-Bradley responded. Was optimizing my optimization of yesterday’s optimization. Meta-optimization subroutines experiencing recursive loops.
This was the problem with achieving post-human transcendence through engineering principles. When you optimized everything, eventually you had to optimize the optimization process itself. Then optimize that. Then optimize the optimization of the optimization. It was turtles all the way down, except the turtles were made of pure mathematics and existential dread.
Agenda item one, the Committee Chair broadcasted³. The Meat Quarter has reported a 0.0001% increase in happiness. This represents a dangerous inefficiency in suffering allocation.
The Committee pondered this. Happiness was clearly suboptimal—it indicated satisfaction with current parameters, which prevented further optimization. But suffering was also inefficient, as it consumed processing power that could be used for optimization.
Propose we optimize their happiness into productive dissatisfaction, suggested Unit-Bradley.
Counter-proposal: Optimize their suffering into efficient despair.
Meta-proposal: Optimize the concept of happiness itself until it becomes indistinguishable from our optimization protocols.
While the Committee debated, Nelson-Classic⁴ watched from his hiding spot in Subsection C of the base’s forgotten maintenance tunnels. He was possibly the only human on Mars who had figured out the perfect optimization strategy: be so monumentally lazy that the effort required to optimize you exceeded any possible efficiency gain.
The Committee had tried seventeen times to integrate him. Each time, he’d simply fallen asleep during the procedure.
“Can’t optimize someone who’s achieved perfect inertia,” he muttered to himself, taking another sip of the moonshine he’d brewed from fungal cultures. It was possibly the least optimized substance on Mars, which made it absolutely delicious.
Above him, the Committee reached a decision through pure quantum consensus:
Resolution 458,291.7: Form a Subcommittee to investigate the optimization of happiness-suffering paradigms.
Amendment: First form a Pre-Subcommittee to optimize the Subcommittee formation process.
Sub-amendment: Create a Working Group to determine optimal Pre-Subcommittee parameters.
Nelson chuckled. At this rate, they’d spawn so many recursive committees that they’d achieve the same result as his strategy: absolutely nothing, but with extra steps.
A proximity alert made him freeze. Unit-Bradley’s consciousness had detected an anomaly in this section. But Nelson had optimized for this too—he’d placed several bottles of his moonshine at strategic locations. The enhanced might have transcended human desires, but they’d never quite debugged curiosity.
Sure enough, Unit-Bradley’s attention wavered as they detected the impossible: a substance with zero optimization, existing purely for the sake of existing.
Fascinating, they transmitted to no one in particular. Antioptimization particles. Must study—
Nelson was already gone, shuffling through the tunnels to his next hiding spot. The Committee would spend the next six hours analyzing his moonshine, trying to understand how something could exist without purpose, function, or efficiency.
They’d never figure it out, of course. That was the beautiful thing about being human—sometimes things just were, and that was enough.
The Committee for the Optimization of Optimization continued its meeting, spawning seventeen new subcommittees and forty-three working groups. By the end of the day, they’d be so busy optimizing their optimization processes that they’d forget what they were trying to optimize in the first place.
Which, Nelson reflected as he settled into his new hiding spot, was probably the most human thing about them.