Our silly obsession with performance

Every day a new thing gets released, a new AI model, new car, new service, new phone, new laptop, new headphones, new power bank, new, new, new… and our compulsion is to ask: how does it perform vs what came before? Completely natural way of seeing thing, completely pointless way to measure that, because that question is a proxy for: Does this make my life better? And that is a complicated question with a sample of one that no one but you can answer (and maybe not even you!). We have benchmarks, KPIs, metrics, statistics, testimonials, all in the name of answering that question, does it make my life better?, without really answering it directly. I am saying it is a silly obsession specifically when it comes to performance: this car has 24 more hp or kw than the previous one this laptop is 15% faster at this benchmark than the old one these headphones deliver a crispier mid-range than the competition (audiophile are the worst, don’t ask me how I know) None of this tells you: value of…