2076-03-28 Enemy of the Good

The retort, "Do you have a better idea?" did not elicit anything useful.

Le meglio è l'inimico del bene. [The best is the enemy of the good.]—Italian proverb

I would be hard pressed to point to any of my significant inventions and not have a story to tell about some well-meaning idiot complaining that it wasn't good enough. I use 'idiot' here as in the strict ancient Greek, one who is so self-centered and private (rather than public-spirited and informed) that they are ignorant of the actual needs of the rest of the world. Frankly, I do not care if my work is of benefit to a solitary individual. I work for the betterment of our species.

When I began cleaning the plastic out of the north Pacific Ocean, one of the first complaints I received was that our filtering rate of ninety-two percent was not really cleaning. The implication seemed to be that anything less than one hundred percent was somehow a bad thing. I thought briefly about keel-hauling the complainer, equipped with a hand sieve, and inviting them to improve on our success.