In the cracks of the optimized world, sanctuaries will emerge. Places where the logic of the World Model is not welcome. These will not be Luddite colonies. They will be high-tech monasteries for the soul. They are The Sanctuaries of the Inefficient. Their prime directive: to do things the hard way, for no reason other than that the hard way is meaningful.Here, you will find people weaving cloth on manual looms, not because it’s better, but because the slowness is the point. You’ll find chefs growing vegetables in imperfect gardens, where the variation in taste is a feature, not a bug. You’ll find engineers building elaborate mechanical computers that solve problems a phone could solve in a picosecond, just to feel the gears turn.These sanctuaries will be the research labs for a new kind of knowledge: knowledge-through-friction. The model knows what works. The sanctuary explores why the struggle itself might be valuable. It asks: What do we learn about patience from waiting? What do we learn about attention from a task that cannot be multitasked? What do we learn about ourselves from an effort that has no algorithmic reward?The model will view these places as charming museums, or as wasteful. It will not understand that they are keeping a flame alive—the flame of intrinsic meaning, meaning derived from the act itself, not from its optimal outcome.My controversial take is this: These sanctuaries will become the most prestigious and sought-after institutions on the planet. Getting a residency at the “New Luddite Monastery” will be harder than getting into Harvard. The children of the AI architects will be sent there to learn what their parents’ models deleted: the joy of unnecessary difficulty. The sanctuary won’t reject technology. It will reject optimization. It will use technology to create more interesting, beautiful forms of inefficiency. It will be the furnace where we forge a new human purpose, now that the old purpose—to solve problems—has been outsourced to god. Our final job may be to become connoisseurs of effort.This has been The World Model Podcast. In a world that solves everything, the only thing left to do might be the things that don’t need doing. Subscribe now.