Ignorance is Beautiful

 Anyone who knows me in person knows one thing for sure that I love space. 

Both kinds of spaces actually, as an introverted person, I need my personal space intact.

And The Space. Outer Space. Renders of space like these never fail to capture my attention, just the same way as they did when I was 7 maybe.

Of course, this is not even an accurate picture of outer space. Instead, it's a Photoshop render. Scientifically Hella inaccurate. I don't mean to tell that the actual images are any less breathtaking (Man, just look at the Hubble database of Nebulas it has captured over past decades, and the lines between a seemingly science-fiction imagination and reality of the universe start to blur). 

What I actually want to talk, and appreciate here right now is the Photoshop renders like the one above.
Pictures like these, or abstract arts.
Not constrained to being scientifically accurate, the ability to take completely unrelated, different scale objects together and fuse them into a single picture is mind-blowing.

I think I need to elaborate on this point a little.

A systematically trained mind learns how to think and analyze the given data using the taught rules. If asked to add 2+2, the laws are universal; the answer Has to be 4 playing by the rules. Constraining minds to think only based on the given constraints is undoubtedly necessary for subjects like Mathematics (You cannot show your imagination there and call 2+2 = 22, that would be dumb and wrong). Likewise, you try to use the correct grammar of the language you use, you constrain your mind to think by rules. 

Take the above picture, for example. For someone who studies astronomy or cosmology, I don't think a view like this holds any importance, apart from its awe-inspiring imagination skill. 

(Still, for the sake of argument, The Only valid case I can think of is if a researcher is trying to make sense of whether the particular configuration of planets is possible, that would probably make a picture like this possible. )

Almost regularly, news of the sorts keeps breaking out "Scientists found an Earth-like planet, Earth 2.0," and newspapers and media are then filled with these mysterious renders of green-bluish planets. These are, again, only Photoshop renders, a scientist/artist trying to imagine how the world would probably look like, where in reality, the only data observed by scientists is a dip in graphs of star's brightness. (That is precisely how Kepler Telescope worked and discovered thousands of alien worlds).

Yes.
More often than not, especially in space science (and I'm sure the same is true in almost all other fields of science), new pathbreaking discoveries are nothing more than well, observed and finely processed data. Some raw numbers show a trend, and clever theoretical explanations deduced from them. Data is a bunch of numbers after all, right? And later, with all their scientific, mathematical rigors hidden behind the abstractions created by illustrators.

These abstractions can be as easy and straightforward as bar charts. Or maybe their detailed but not-that-useful cousins, Artist's Impressions (and then, there are Infographics and so many other things. I'm no expert on this topic.)

Stripping off the fun

Things like these have always attracted me to photo editing (but I'm a lazy person.) Back when I was 13 and had got my first computer, it was pretty much in trend to learn the basics of photoshop, and every third peer of mine who owned a computer claimed to be a photoshop master. 

(And, there were/are many coaching institutes as well, teaching photoshop as an intermediate level sorta computer skill, which many people of our country go on to pursue and then show their skills by horribly editing themselves into most unlikely places and becoming viral Meme material)

I, however, could not learn photoshop back then. Probably I lacked the patience to master a skill, where I was lured by dramatic Before - After renders, and a 14 y. o. me hoping to achieve that level in just a couple of hours of tutorials (just the way I had learned any other software up until that stage). Not wanting to sit through hours of basics, my every attempt at learning the software ended up in a note to self as "will see in future."

That future moment is yet to come. 

And I am very thankful for having not learned this skill yet, and probably will never learn either. 

If one thing I have learned painstakingly, it is that "what you like is not necessarily what you are good at."

And the classic example of Computer Languages. 

They feel So Cool to think about, Like, can you really make any software you want to, make it act the way you want to, if you really master a language, probably C or C++?

A 14-year-old me dreamt like this. 

And thus, began my quest to learn the language. Started out with C++, which was soon introduced into the school curriculum. I did learn the language and pretty much mastered the skill as well, and thankfully not falling into the mirage of learning a new skill within two hours this time. (Because it was school curriculum after all.)

Later, I learned Python and a couple of other languages as well, as part of the college curriculum. 

But something was missing.

Computers did not suddenly become as powerful for me over time as my younger self had probably dreamt of. Sure, I did learn many skills, and I'm usually pretty confident with my way around computers, can make my stuff work most of the time, etc. But it did not feel like that Magic which I used to dream of. It was almost like, "learning the details strips the fun of the things."

Learning the details of these beautiful things have always stripped the fun off for me. I know it's true for everyone else, for something or the other. 

Another example that I can recollect right now is about Mathematics. There are So many mathematical theories that, when explained well and in an intuitive manner, are So Beautiful. 

But, dwelling past the visualizations into heavy mathematical details has always been my biggest heartbreak from time to time.

I want to learn deep into the Chaos Theory and see how it all works, attracted and inspired by its many physical, real-world ramifications. But reading anything past the introduction chapters of books reminds me, with pain, that I really suck at essential calculus. 

Of course, I Know Calculus. I am not skilled enough at solving sums and understanding equations with as ease and fluency as is required unless someone walks me through each step. 

And therein stops all the fun part of learning something I admire. 

You can accuse me of being lazy. I know. Learning anything requires us to take up the pain, sit through uncomfortable, seemingly useless, and downright dull chapters as well. 

It is sitting through these long hours that we learn any subject after all.

And we eventually grow into loving, even those formerly ugly chapters as well over time.

But what if my goal was never really to master the subject in the first place? 

For many topics, I am only attracted to them because of the imaginations I hold about them in my mind. They are beautiful. It's this positive image in mind which sometimes pushes me into learning the details as well. 

And, more often than not, learning messy details make the beautiful abstraction not that beautiful anymore.

Take Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, for example, if you are like me, the concept that time is relative, that time can go at different rates for different observers in the universe, is the most unintuitive concept, to begin with, and holds an eerie attraction in itself. So much so that you go on to read books targeted at general masses, explaining these phenomena in the most non-mathematical manner, in the simplest English possible. That concepts like time travel make a lovely strong place in your imaginations.

But any attempt to learn their mathematical counterparts explaining the proofs immediately begins to shake the premises of those imaginations in mind. (Frequently, these pre-notions about many concepts turn out to be dead wrong as well). As mentioned before, if you really want to learn, master a subject, this awkward phase is a necessary step towards transformation, of evolving a mere attraction of a subject into learning the depths of it. 

But do I really want to do that? 

Do I necessarily need to be an expert in everything I like? 

The answer is No. 

I fail to recognize this from time to time and set myself on the quests to unrealistic targets. But No.

You can really Not become the master, the expert, of everything. 

This seems pretty obvious to say. Let me rephrase.

"You can not, and need not be the expert of every that thing that you like and enjoy."

Sometimes we can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the movie intended for broader mass. And not think of how the film was made while watching the movie. We don't have to relate to All subtle references in the movie; sure, we can learn about them over time, or maybe never. We have to overcome the FOMO associated with it. (At least 'I' have to do this.)

Coming back to point,

Should I really learn Photoshop?  My original motivation was to paint some extraordinary imaginations or dream sequences, galaxies, or anything like that. But, like all other things, I have concluded for myself that if I dwell into any more details of photo editing and photoshop, I will stop seeing the abstract arts for what they really are showing. Instead, my mind might only start thinking, "Oh, is that a transparent layer added with so and so object to make this looks a little different and bigger in perspective" or something like those technical talks, maybe.

It is better now that I can enjoy such arts for what they really are, as a real audience, and my mind can safely ignore the details put into making the illusions and not think about how this illusion was created.

For me, this "stripping of fun" has happened with the field of Electronics for now, my college majors, which is no more fun. Thinking about Intel Processors does not spark those futuristic visuals in mind as shown in ads; instead, MOSFETS, Photolithography, process technology, hardware design, etc., are the terms that populate my mind. (Update: I have not given up on my majors though, I still like it for most parts and now doing my PG in a sub-field which I love.)

And lastly, I have to mention. I am not making this point as a generalization for everything you like. Even the attraction for crushes fades with time once you get to know them closely. The same is true for most things. Conclusion: there Will be certain things we have to consciously decide that we want to get uncomfortable for them and will take pain for them. Not just academic or subjects of interest, it can be anything. As Mark Manson had put in famous orange book that, "To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important."