Perfection, stupid actions and time machines

I agree, at first glance, those 3 terms seem like they have very little to do with each other, or a lot. I was wondering the other day about all the stupid and not-so-stupid things I've done in my life, and I wasn't quite able to finish the list, there're that many. I guess everyone's done their share of stupid things, I believe I've done atleast about 2 person's worth, maybe everyone does. My problem is that with every stupid action, I tend to start off a string of corrective measures, and I can't rest until all is fixed. My stupid actions don't usually involve bodily harm, apart from a rare few, but their ramifications usually are on a pretty nice scale. I always wonder whether the corrective actions cause more damage than the initial actions themselves. One thing I'm sure of, this is one post that'll probably make sense to me, no matter what the post date is, past, present or future.

So lets get to perfection, everyone's seen the seemingly perfect people. Who are on top of everything, do everything right, and all the right things happen to them. And these people seem to exist out of fiction as well. I guess someone in another position would consider me as one of these descended-from-heaven sorts, at least for a moment. The simple fact is perfect people are god-awefully boring, there's nothing so interesting about them, you get used to them doing their tasks with immaculate precision and efficiency, in so much that you get used to it. Roger Federer in his now interrupted reign as world no. 1 is probably a good example of this. The media loves these perfect people, at least until they can find a bit of dirt on them, or they stop being perfect. Science is the pursuit of perfection, and they do pretty well. But one of my professors once remarked about the cyclical nature of research, atleast in computer hardware, and it's probably true in a sense. The essential nature of all new things we do can be classified in terms of something old, that's our nature. But all these new things begin as an aberration, almost as a stupid action. Copernicus wasn't considered as smart when he said the earth wasn't the center of the universe, Van Gogh wasn't considered a great artist during his lifetime. It seems all new things derive from the certain level of unhappiness with the status quo of perfection. Henry Ford attributed most new inventions to a lazy man looking for an easier way to do something.

Coming to time machines, I always feel the ardent desire to have a time machines to fix all the stupid things I've done till now, after I've done something stupid. It only lasts for a while, after which slowly, it either dulls out, or becomes funny in some stupid way. It's always interesting to ponder about questions that have no answer, because if you are able to go back and change things, logic should dictate that you as you know yourself should cease to exist. Because, quite simply, you are one path through a decision tree, if one decision changes, you changed a branch, and thus you will end up on some other path. As much as I might hate the stupid things I've done, I like myself, and am rather risk averse, so that time machine scenario seems less appealing after calming down. If all this seems a little weird to you, this is either the first time you've read my blog, or never really got any of the previous posts :P . Philosophy in all its beauty, is simply the thought and pursuit of the unanswerable questions, which seem pointless to most. Coming back to stupid things and perfection, maybe to attain perfection, we must do stupid things. Else if it was a scientific path, someone would have done it already, and given a proof to fit. Maybe that's the reason artificial intelligence isn't yet able to match human "intelligence", because what may seem stupid to us may actually be perfect. Because maybe we're inherently flawed, and maybe perfection isn't the absence of flaws, or rather understanding them. In so doing, I don't quite regret the stupid things I've done, only their ramifications.

In case any of you were wondering at the beginning that they've made more stupid mistakes than me, I rest my case. Anyone who can think up such reasoning must've thought about it more than anyone else :) .