I have quite a bit of video content this month. Mostly because I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks and it’s not a medium conducive to notetaking, so my notetaking has been done when I’m chilling in the evening and watching YouTube. The only gripe I have about listening to books instead of reading them on paper (or a screen) is that it’s harder to stop and take notes. Either way, I’ve had a lot of material flowing through the space between my ears and not all of it courtesy of Google.
Anyway, here are a few items and some thoughts I had directly after/while listening to and/or reading them.
Talent is a myth
Over the course of a week, I noticed this trend that I was seeing in the books and blogs I was reading, as well as the videos that I check in on with various creators (see the Adam Savage link below). The topic of talent kept coming up. You can blame the algorithm, but it also showed up in Sally Mann’s book Art Work (affiliate link).
Anytime a thought/meme like that appears more than three times, it’s either my brain unconsciously mining the universe for ideas, or it is Big Magic bringing ideas to my attention. This week, it was the idea that what we call “talent” is a construct; essentially, a way for people to handwave away the amount of effort involved in creative success. Disney Imagineering Artist Says Talent is a Myth – (Ray Kinman)
- embrace mistakes: “we’re trained to get the right answers and get rewarded for those and penalized for mistakes, but mistakes are where the great learning and growth comes.”
- “talent is mostly a myth… your greatest asset you have is your persistence and that’s the one thing that you’re fully in control of. When you see someone who really excels at something it’s persistence and staying with it and repetition over a long period of time.”
Related to the above (possibly the reason the above video was suggested) was this one by Adam Savage: Why creativity means nothing
- when learning, you need to gather enough information to have perspective on a single issue.
- creativity is similar, “you don’t have to know how to complete the build, you only have to know what the next step is.”
- focus on what you can achieve next and then a new point of view can reveal new things that weren’t clear before
- Point of view can be developed and then “creativity” is just problems that you solve until finally your aesthetic is revealed to you.
Speaking of creativity, was this advice for “multipassionate creatives” (like me):
- don’t start over
- build up different skills that weave your creative voice
In short, I guess my brain was upset at me for being upset that I keep getting creatively blocked, so I was reminded that I just need to work.
Boring photography
I’m interested in any form of creativity, and particularly those artists that can inform my creativity. When I saw this, I was struck by the mundanity of the subjects, but of course, that’s what Stephen Shore was going for. Think of the sheer number of photos taken of streets, parking lots, or gas stations. How does one make it art? What Stephen Shore Knew About Shooting Boring Places
- steven shore’s photographs of mundane scenes are revealed to be sensitive views that invite the eye to wander over the scene.
- Each has a central focal point, usually colorful, that draws the eye first, then to other objects
- subsidiary points of focus invite the viewer to linger
Trendslop – AI is heavy on presentation
Full disclosure: I have occasionally used AI to come up with intros to my link posts. Starting with the memex posts, all editorial commentary is fully organic output from my brain.
I find (as I believe a lot of people have), that there’s always something a little lacking in AI output. It’s not always bad exactly, it’s always very polished and quite certain in its assertions. But this video argues that AI tends to drift toward the middle. That makes sense. If you take the output of every genius, and add in the output of reddit/youtube/twitter comments, you’re probably going to get something pretty average. Harvard just discovered what AI actually is
- clustered advice=trendslop
- “it’s not so much a thinking product as it is a presentation product.”
- “we thought AI was going to make everyone a genius. What it’s actually doing is taking the smartest people in the room and moving them toward the middle. It makes average sound like genius.”
Continuing in the AI vein, was this article about the risks of syncophantic AI
- “LLMs overwhelmingly affirm user actions, even against human consensus or in harmful contexts”
- “That, they conclude, means that almost anyone has the potential to be susceptible to the effects of a sycophantic AI – and more likely to keep coming back for more bad, self-centered advice.”
And what does that second point tell us about the potentially dangerous and risky choices that could be made by billionaires who are always and only surrounded by syncophants?
Making blogs like this illegal (or, at least, not worth the effort)
Finally, as a long-time Internet resident, I find the trend toward online ID quite troubling. It seems like one of those things that gets artificially promoted and not for the reasons they give you in the media. Dopamine is not why kids love social media.
- that’s the entire goal of these “social media addiction” lawsuits. We know that those pursuing them aren’t actually interested in changing the design of social media, their goal is to censor “harmful content.”
- the parents of “social media victims” held a press conference. At that press conference, they didn’t mention a single thing about laws that would alter “design features.”
- Instead, they immediately began advocating for mass online ID verification, repealing Section 230, and passing the Kids Online Safety Act with a strong “duty of care.”
- All three of these policy proposals would lead to mass censorship and surveillance, and none of them would do anything to change the alleged “addictive design” of the platforms.
So, enjoy the Web while you have it. If the billionaires have any say in it (and they have more say than you or I do), then the only “internet” that will exist in the future is going to be owned by Zuckerberg and his ilk.