One decade ago, one would have laughed at me if I would have suggested that a slightly imperfect looking essay might, in some respect, be better than an extremely perfect-looking text. Today, I do not have to force that argument. With the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) in our lives, we just agree: at least in some domains, what looks perfect is not the best. A ChatGPT generated essay, full of flowery words and fluff, which almost sounds coherent and profound but does not mean anything even upon rereading it: that might look perfect but is deeply inauthentic.

Think of the following sentence describing The Gazelle that ChatGPT produced for me: “[The] Gazelle does not simply report or reflect — it becomes a journey, a dialogue, and a collective act of expression that stretches beyond the page into the very fabric of community." If I ask you to tell me one piece of information it gives you about The Gazelle, your brain aches from the lack of concrete-ness in the sentence. Sure, the sentence explains that The Gazelle is something. But we are not quite sure of what that something is. It feels like a mirage but made out of words.

It has turned out to be so widespread that we have started becoming almost skeptical about perfection. Think of a professor reading an almost perfect-sounding email, or your friend producing an almost perfect message, our suspicion sparks up. One could make an argument that this is a new phenomenon, and our discomfort with perfection is relatively novel. After all, we have sought perfection throughout our whole lives, and philosophers have been talking about this instinct of ours for centuries now. Simone De Beauvoir argues that our life involves an intrinsic ambiguity. We are finite beings: limited, crushed by other things, extremely dependent on collectivity. On the other hand, we are also infinite: extremely powerful for what we could do in the world, unique subjects amidst a universe of objects. “We all feel the tragic ambiguity of this condition,” Beauvoir says. That ambiguity, in some sense, is a glimpse of imperfection; a contradictory state of being. However, we have always tried to mask this ambiguity. Some entirely deny life, and become nihilists or ascetics. Others entirely deny death and embrace immortality. Everyone wants perfection; there is a general aversion towards imperfection and ambiguity.

But I want to bring forth an almost cliché point: imperfection is deeply human. What I think we desire more than something perfect is something authentic. Perfection and authenticity do not necessarily mean the same thing in all contexts, true. But, what is perfection? The idea of perfection might be subjective in various respects: across time, societies, and individuals. However, we could all agree that at a certain point in a certain society, there is a tendency to create an objective ideal of perfection, however subjective in reality it might be. We are all trying to find out the nuts and bolts of what perfection is, as illusory it might turn out to be, and aim towards that ideal. A perfect friend, a perfect student, a perfect country, and so on.

Authenticity, on the other hand, is being yourself for the sake of it. Authenticity is mostly about whether or not the subject acts with pretension. It necessarily involves passion and love for what one does. One could be a great filmmaker, create extraordinary movies, and yet not have a passion for their work. On the other hand, a similar filmmaker might be producing their work, and also love their work. The latter seems more authentic than the former.

Inauthenticity involves doing something not because you like it, but because you want to be seen as someone who does X. It could be the case that you do X both because you like X, and also because you want to be seen as one who likes X. In that case, we could still think that the subject is authentic. The presence of genuine love of X to some degree could make the subject authentic. Mastery then is not the problem. Perfection is not the problem; the problem, like in the ChatGPT case, is the masking of this perfection as if it were genuine.

This idea of pretension and performance might be controversial. In one lucky D2 lunch, one of my friends, Sophiya, immediately objected to my idea of authenticity. Her view was that everything is performance, and that we all are performing in our roles. Then, authenticity in that world does not make sense, since there is no one who does not perform. I have a differing opinion. I think even under the world where we are all performing, there has to be a distinction between cases where we perform in a way where we are individually us in what we do, versus where we suppress our individuality because we want to be seen in a certain way.

Why might one want to be more authentic than perfect? We are all similar and different in various ways. However, as individuals, there is at least one thing that is different in all of us – we see the world differently. Consciousness is necessarily private. I do not know what it feels to be my friend who I hang out with most of the time, nor does he know what it feels to be me. People who argue that authenticity has value, whether it be for the subject who is performing an action, or for the recipient of the action, say so because they think this individuality is important in some respect. One argument could be that it is important because it gives us new information about how a subject views the world. Sartre and Nietzsche, among other philosophers, talk about finding and channeling your own inner self out in the world. There are some who disagree with this inside to outside pathway, where we value our own sense of self so much that we forget that most of our actions, even first inauthentic, can later lead to passion and authenticity. I might go to the gym because I want to be seen as someone going to the gym, and yet in a few months, I might just like the gym so much; this does not seem at all inconsistent. So, why disparage inauthenticity, they might question. For now though, let us assume that we all agree authenticity is at least more valuable than inauthenticity in some respect. Or, perhaps argue that this whole passionately arguing against the modern idea of valuing authenticity is in itself an act that comes out of authenticity – being true to what you feel, and what you think is important. The debate here seems endless and fascinating.

Introspecting, I have never been more enraged at AI models producing something that matches the ideal of perfection we have in our society without authenticity. I have stopped writing perfect emails to professors, and I have stopped submitting perfect assignments. In fact, I submitted a paper recently without even polishing it because I did not want it to be perfect. And I do not know if this is something I need to feel particularly good about. Is my skepticism with perfection in regards to polishing of the essay making me more careless rather than authentic?

I want to convince you that this is not new. We have seen this cynicism about perfection in the past. We have been wary of too kind people; there is a lingering fear that they are hiding something sinister behind their generosity. I have seen people be wary of too good looking fruits; there is a lingering fear that it might be genetically modified. The Instagram Reels showing performative matcha-drinking males, reading Simone De Beauvoir at the palms, is another example of this instinct: the fear is that they might be doing it for reasons other than actually caring about feminism, or their love of matcha. But we can step back from an evaluative lens and recognize a deep instinct: our need for authenticity and for-the-sake-of-it. And I think it is good – something we should lean more into. One especially promising path to resistance as humans, specifically in the age of AI, is appreciating more authenticity and dismantling the idea of perfection. I am sure this article is not perfect, and you are already looking at the missing pieces. Being honest, I am happy the way it is!