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Perfectionism is optimizing at the wrong scale

At the risk of stating the obvious even more obviously than I usually do: sometimes the perfect approach involves tolerating imperfection. Imperfection?! Yes. Specifically, the more macroscopic one’s view becomes, the more microscopic imperfections may need to be tolerated — if they don’t matter to the goal, or the

Specifically, the more macroscopic one’s view becomes, the more microscopic imperfections may need to be tolerated — if they don’t matter to the goal, or the effort required means it’s a trade-off with something else that would make the whole more perfect. It can feel like free energy at the time, but it's more like credit card debt: it must be repaid at a later date, with interest. Sometimes optimizing at all scales is a bad idea because of a shortage of lifetime resources, like energy and money.

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