The pursuit of greatness

Recently I’ve seen quite a lot of people online raising questions about the usefulness of learning foreign languages, practicing writing or drawing. Their point: AI will be doing all of these for us, and will be far better and we’ll ever be. So why even try?

When it comes to a pure utilitarian perspective, they might be right. I’ve been also reaping the benefit of delegating hard work to AI (AI-powered coding tool, Cursor, is a godsend). I still believe, however, that striving for mastery in things AI or Robots can outperform humans is a noble pursuit because it exemplifies beauty that can’t be found in always and already perfect beings.

Imagine a basketball game played by a bunch of robots, them being able to put 3-pointers in with 100% of accuracy all the time. What about a baseball game where robot hitters hit 10 homeruns? Pure perfection isn’t beautiful. Beauty lies in the harmony between order and chaos, like 95% or order (perfect execution of skills like triple axel or homeruns) and 5% of chaos (possibility of mistakes or unpredictable events), like Wabi-Sabi (Japanese concept on their ideal aesthetics).

Our life and the universe are governed by the rule of entrophy (ie. Ordered matters deteriorate into chaotic states). The fact that a lot of us bringing more structure into our brain (ie. charting new neural paths) by pursuing mastery in physical or mental skills is just awe-inspiring. Human beings are glorified when they achieve their full potential in defying entropy.

Consistency is the foundation of our anti-entropy journey. It’s definitely hard, because we’re not AI or robots and our willpower inherently dissipates over time due to entropy. Nevertheless, we should persevere and aim toward the impossible goal of reaching perfection, and accept our fate that we can’t reach the goal but reap the reward — the beauty of ephemeral near-perfection — that can be only found from our pursuit of greatness.

In the movie Troy, Achilles (played by Brad Pitt) says, “The gods envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.”

Our pursuit of greatness is beautiful, and that’s how we kick Entropy’s ass.