Sadly, "therapy speak" entering in to someone's life can be its own form of getting worse.
Still, I think your point is largely fair and correct. Easy to agree with the headline, in that you likely won't optimize your way to being a good person. But you can use optimization ideas to remove things that are making you not a good person. Indeed, the main optimization idea is to measure something, and then take action to move it in the direction you prefer. If what you are doing isn't moving in that direction, you aren't optimizing for it anymore.
Still, I think your point is largely fair and correct. Easy to agree with the headline, in that you likely won't optimize your way to being a good person. But you can use optimization ideas to remove things that are making you not a good person. Indeed, the main optimization idea is to measure something, and then take action to move it in the direction you prefer. If what you are doing isn't moving in that direction, you aren't optimizing for it anymore.