Artists must be allowed to make bad work
austinkleon.com
Artists must be allowed to make bad work
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Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#2Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#3Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.
Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#4Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.
Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...
Possibly yes, but on emulators/training data/virtual patients. One of the advantages of today's digital world is that you don't have to jump to the real thing immediately.
Come to think of it, maybe even laws should be tested in a laboratory first. We cannot emulate the human society fully, but some unwanted effects could be detected this way anyway.
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#5I truly think of science and engineering, software development included, as an artistic feat in part. And we can easily see how the opinion expressed in this interview easily applies to what we do. Yes, we all have periods where we should be allowed to do bad work, learn on it and eventually come out with better ideas. Yes, the "public" pressure and the focus on novelty is there (right now on HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35955336).
P.S. I have just realized that I have the "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon in my library. Proves the point of being an artist I guess :D
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...
Possibly yes, but on emulators/training data/virtual patients. One of the advantages of today's digital world is that you don't have to jump to the real thing immediately. Come to think of it, maybe even laws should be tested in a laboratory first. We cannot emulate the human society fully, but some unwanted effects could be detected this way anyway.
It's easy to find issues in laws with some brainstorming over a pizza. The problem is people pushing certain laws frequently don't give a damn about side effects. Why would they care about results coming out from a simulation?
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#7Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.
> trial and error
There's a clip of John Cleese showing how Beethoven in fact composed the 5th symphony by trial and error.
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#8Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.
Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...
Maybe the statement could be refined to "must be given opportunity for failure".
For some professions that might include running some projects at a smaller scale, as a simulation or even as role play exercise
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly yes, but on emulators/training data/virtual patients. One of the advantages of today's digital world is that you don't have to jump to the real thing immediately. Come to think of it, maybe even laws should be tested in a laboratory first. We cannot emulate the human society fully, but some unwanted effects could be detected this way anyway.
It's easy to find issues in laws with some brainstorming over a pizza. The problem is people pushing certain laws frequently don't give a damn about side effects. Why would they care about results coming out from a simulation?
It is easy to find theoretical issues through brainstorming, but weeding out the false positives is much less easy.
As an example, religious conservatives will brainstorm a lot of issues that are bound to rise (according to them) from gay emancipation. In practice, these failed to manifest.
Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work
#10That's the free market pressure. The free market only cares about your present performance, not about your past. And it is by many believed to be a good thing, because it's very meritocratic.
But it has downsides, too. People are human, not machines, and sometimes need to rest too. That's why we shouldn't leave everything up to the free market (not even the one that works in liberal theory and is perfectly meritocratic).
It was also one of the justifications behind copyright, to give artists more stability.