Entry 2: Global Maxima

How high will we go? We often speak of potential as an asymptotic upper bound.

Taken seriously, this view is not far from late-medieval Catholic notions of predestination where life unfolds according to God's script. Maybe the notion of freedom exists only because people don't know what the future holds for them. To treat potential as fixed is to imply that our actions never exceed our capacity, only reveal it. Whatever you ultimately accomplish becomes proof of what you were capable of all along.

Under this pretense of omniscience, the reassuring phrases we offer each other become fatalistic. "You did the best you could" no longer sounds gentle. It becomes a metaphysical claim. It implies not merely that you tried hard, but that your actions exhausted your available capacity. "You couldn't have done any better" ceases to be praise and becomes a statement of determinism.

So how high will we go? And are we creating our limits, or just discovering them?