Monday, July 23, 2012

Everyday Immortality - The Mathematical Ghost



Before my decision to observe them, subatomic particles are probability amplitudes or mathematical ghosts in a field of infinite possibilities.

People make mistakes throughout their lives. Is this a fair statement? Before you answer this, have you ever wondered what constitutes a mistake? Can the implications of a mistake be definitive? What are the atoms of a mistake?

Where permanence and perpetuity are concerned, a mistake is a make-up of overlooked immaterial emplacements from material movements of events in time and space.

We often ignore and disregard what is perceived as irrelevant to us. Unheeded signs become inconsequential. This human nature and behaviour is in fact a derivative of quantifiable actions and intentions limited only by our perception of reality.

The essence of a mistake is an error. I have always believed in this single and fundamentally overriding philosophy: an error only becomes a mistake if it is repeated.

So is it inaccurate to say that we make more errors in life than we have care for the repeated errors made that become mistakes ultimately?

Because I keep my faith in the fact that errors and mistakes made are a function of our choices denominated by our warped sense of control and numerated by our inability to predict a logical response to our environment.

It is no different when stating I have not made a mistake by getting lost in the wilderness because I did find my way eventually, but I admit getting confused with my surrounding for several hours and it was an error on my part.

I strongly feel that it is important to be able to recognise the difference between errors and mistakes in life because it sets the tone of your expectations on people and your surrounding which ultimately determines your reaction.

Imagine that you were tasked to gather the ingredients for a recipe your mother is going to prepare tonight. Had you forgotten to drop by the grocery store on your way home and obtain the said ingredients, you would have made a mistake causing a significant impact to the events that will unfold for the rest of the evening. Your mother’s logical response would be to get angry with you.

On the other hand, if you did not forget the ingredients but somehow made the misjudgement of getting the correct amount of ingredients listed, you would then have made an error but the recipe would still be intact and dinner would still be served. There is no real need for your mother to get angry here but instead, to show you her wisdom in acknowledging your errors and recognising the easily overlooked fact that you did remember to drop by the grocery store on your way home. People often take little things like that for granted.

And this is what they truly are: errors are deviations from a set of planned actions but mistakes are errors caused by a fault. The ability to determine the difference is what sets a leader apart from a group of followers.

When one realises this, he or she will then see mistakes as the axle of choice and opportunity.

Where opportunities are concerned, mistakes allow evolutionary stability to exist within a society or a group of people. For it to be achievable there must exist a positive probability of mistakes in all circumstances within the grouping. For it to be sustainable there should be some strategy that is the best response to itself in all situations for every possible interaction within the group.

The conditions of a positive probability and a strategy for response cannot be restrictive. In real life, mistakes are always possible. As long as there is some chance of errors occurring, then every possible sequence of behaviour will be generated with some probability.

Like a person’s inability or ability to believe in ghosts, mistakes are inevitable and one should never be afraid to make them. Believe in mistakes. Because when you do, you will see that a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.

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