Approaching the Asymptote
My father and I walked out of the movie theater and, once we were far enough away so as not to spoil the experience for others, eagerly began dissecting the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
“Oh man!” I shouted. “What a trip! I can’t believe how good the special effects were.”
“Pretty wild, right?” he responded.
“Yeah! Dad, you work with supercomputers and all that crazy stuff. How much better can it really be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there has to be a line between computer-generated graphics and reality that we can’t cross, right? I mean, eventually there has to be a point when they can’t get any more realistic.”
“That’s true, but I’m not sure we’re there yet,” he said.
“We must be pretty close. I can’t believe how realistic that was.”
I was referring to podracing, of course. The year was 1999. The movie was Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
The Pursuit of Perfection
It’s easy to be bad at something. It takes some effort to be good. It’s challenging to be great. But it’s impossible to be perfect.
Somewhere between great and perfect exists a line we can’t cross. And the closer we get to perfection, the harder it is to keep getting closer to it.
This is one of Zeno’s paradoxes.
Imagine you’re standing at a spot, and we’ve marked a line on the ground precisely 10 feet in front of you. If you travel to a spot halfway between you and the line, how far have you gone? That’s right, 5 feet.
In one step you’ve gone from bad to good. Now travel half the distance again. How far have you gone this time? 2.5 feet. In one more step you’ve gone from good to great. Now split the difference again. This step takes you only 1.25 feet. You’re a little better than you were before, but despite your improvement, your progress feels like it’s slowing down. The next step takes you 0.625 feet. Then 0.3125 feet, and so on and so forth.
Now each step you take makes you only slightly better than you were before, and yet further and further away from perfection. Perfection is an asymptote, which is a mathematical term denoting a that we can never reach, no matter what. We can get infinitely close to the line, but never touch it.
So, when you’re engaged in a task at work, or trying to improve your relationship with your spouse, or working on your social skills, how good is good enough?
The Uncanny Valley
Modern special effects, or CGI, are incredibly impressive. At least when it comes to buildings, spaceships, storms, and even animals. But human faces remain a problem.
It’s really impressive what they can do. And if you look at a still image of one of those CGI faces, you’d be hard pressed to distinguish it from the real thing. But in motion, the way people actually operate? Something’s not right. We can’t put our finger on it, but there’s something off about that person. It looks perfect, but I can tell it’s not real.
This effect is called the uncanny valley. We are so used to seeing human faces that being just short of perfection, bumping up on the asymptote, is enough to trigger a red flag.
Computer-generated people were easier to enjoy in 1999, when they didn’t look like real people at all. There was nothing to stop your brain from suspending disbelief and simply going along for the ride. But in 2020, when CGI people are just shy of being real? I can’t stop noticing that it’s fake. And that takes me out of the movie.
Authenticity Over Perfection
My TEDx students discover a version of the uncanny valley when I make them rehearse their talks dozens of times. There comes a point when they’ve finally memorized the talk that it feels robotic. The words are right. The performance is there. But something’s off.
And often at this point my students will become frustrated.
“It was better when I was just speaking from the heart!”
Here’s the advice I offer them:
The key to rehearsing a speech is not to practice until you’ve got it down. That’s just the beginning. It’s to keep rehearsing through that point until you’ve internalized it. Until it’s become a part of you. Then and only then do the memorized words and rehearsed movements get out of the way, and you simply become a vessel for the message.
Whatever your pursuit, be it a new skill for your job, connecting with others, or learning an instrument, strive to internalize the process, not to master it.
A teacher of mine once said, “Humans have an acute bullshit detector.” The goal is not to be perfect. It’s to be perfectly authentic.
If only The Phantom Menace had been a promise of better movies to come.
