Friday, April 16, 2010

Approximately In-approximate

In a world where some people intend to express their intention accurate to the third decimal, the word " Approximately" turns out to be a potential savior for the other variety. With increasing complexity and burgeoning dependency on the minusculest of exogenous details, Approximation has transformed itself from being a choice to a necessity for carrying out wordly processes . Now, what I intend to say may not be clear from what I have written so far , but whatever you may think it to be is only approximately correct. This is one fine example of using the word "Approximately" to shadow one's own unknowingness, the fact that I am myself incongnisant of what I mean to say here.

Putting it straight. As I was sitting today in one of my theory classes in college, very devotedly observing a lizard which had ventured into the arena ( the classroom I mean). And by the word "lizard" I do not intend to personify the teacher , it's a real lizard that I intend to bring into picture. I could intuitively sense that the lecture that was then in pursuit, was as effectively paralyzing the lizard physically as it was torturing me mentally. As sympathetically as we looked at each other ( the lizard and I) , I had this malignant hope raging inside me , the hope that the lizard would eventually lose its consciousness and drop dead on the criminal , the very lecturer who can and should be inculpated of paralyzing fifty nine other bright bulbs in class, apart from the already semi-functional one like mine. I was still wondering whether such a fiasco would deter him from continuing his lecture.

As much I would like to elaborate on the above, I'd stick to the issue. So, lost as I was in my unintentional telepathic interaction with the lizard, I had this random thought. What are the consequences of cascaded approximations, the very approximations that have been carried upon through generations. Almost suddenly,the alter ego inside me became all the more cacophonous and made me self answer a few questions. What was the inherent purpose of using an approximation? Clarity , I suppose, I said to myself. What else? backfired the devil. Perhaps ,they used it for the ease of it , I answered. Then came the question of preponderance. What if the process of approximation, which is carried out in one process cascaded to the other, eventually gave a result which contradicted its own inherent purpose ? It was this that made me realise how the deceptively trivial " approximation" may sway the results to an extent that they produce conclusions absolutely contradictory to the real result, camouflaging the real bone of contention by a wide margin.

Now, I know people will try to justify this with concepts of Maximum error and stuff , but that's not the issue here you see. Life and history are not aptitude questions that can be solved with a pen and paper, there are just way too many exogenous things that need to be pondered upon before making a final quote for the answer, which is many a times just impossible to do. An analogy here is a must and this one I suppose is the most relevant right now. Gossip, is possibly the most pervasive form of oratory approximations and I'm pretty sure each one of us has witnessed ( and I say this very sympathetically) the capability of an immature gossip ballooning into a false rumour and eventually souring terms between and amongst many.

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