From Wikipedia:
Minimax (sometimes minmax) is a decision rule used in decision theory, game theory, statistics and philosophy for minimizing the possible loss for a worst case (maximum loss) scenario. Alternatively, it can be thought of as maximizing the minimum gain (maximin).
I first heard about the term through Olivier’s blog title and it struck me like lightning: this is what I’m doing and keep doing all the time and if not achieving it, going toward it. Minmax, maxmin all the way, all the time.
Minmax example: staying in shape even slightly underweight for that moment where I’ll indulged myself for a while. It will have less impact on my pants. Keeping my relationships friendly with everyone so that hate or resent doesn’t add up when shit goes down (which will happen, right? Always does). Less furniture, faster cleaning. Reusing things as much as I can. You got it.
Maxmin example: getting the best deal on a precise laptop when I could just get the new laptop du jour. Rarely eat dessert so that when it happens, it’s joyful. Do few light abs exercises everyday instead of a few heavy workouts a month so that back pain from playing bass disappears while my belly could be used in commercials or music videos. Instead of going hard on my body, I smooth it out through small routines for maximum efficiency and minimum hassle. Maximum pleasure, minimum hassle as much as I can.
Even for big events in my life I feel like I did minmax. For instance one of my bullet point to make game audio was that I was minimizing competition (everybody wanted to record music or score movies, almost none did though) and maximizing possibilities (less creative dictatorship and conventions, so much more to explore/get paid for). Sounded good to me, at least to sell it to my skeptical parents.
It’s all good except that this engineered, long term efficiency is not that popular. Actually society is almost entirely going the other way, wasting and being inefficient everywhere it can. On the other side minmaxing leads to OCPD and some kind of fanaticism about things being a certain way. It’s hard for me to witness inconsistency and wasteful behavior, even though I know that nothing’s perfect, that the world is born from chaos etc.
That really creates a tension, socially that I feel everyday a bit more.