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Artists must be allowed to make bad work

austinkleon.com

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Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#11

Post by evandijk70 »

mantas wrote: post #3
meristohm wrote: post #2

Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.

Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...

For doctors looking to innovate, there are actually a lot of ways to fail fast and safely if you introduce a new drug.

First, establish that a drug binds to the target in laboratory conditions (relatively quick). After that, test the drug in an animal model. After that, proceed to clinical trials, which are phased (phase I, II, III) to first establish whether a dosage exists that is safe (Phase I), what an effective dosage is (Phase II), and only after than testing if it improves upon the current standard of care (Phase III).

Each phase is more costly (both in time and money) than the previous phase and will eliminate a significant portion of drug candidates.

"The success rate of each drug discovery stage in academia was 31.8% for preclinical, 75.1% for phase I, 50.0% for phase II, 58.6% for phase III."

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24406927/

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#12

Post by lelanthran »

barberpole wrote: post #7
meristohm wrote: post #2

Scientists, 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.

I would very much like to see that if you have a link.

Google search doesn't find it for me.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#13

Post by mordae »

mantas wrote: post #3
meristohm wrote: post #2

Scientists, too. Anyone, really; fail faster, people! Celebrate the process of trial and error.

Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...

Even those. When the cost of failure is too high, we need to invest in practices that allow them fail safely. And get as much from failures as possible.

It means giving doctors and nurses simulators, someone to look over their shoulder when learning new techniques, giving them high-quality followup data, finding top performers and make them explain what they do and so on. Which is currently very hard to do, because teaching others means you lose your advantage.

It also means learning from failures of others. That means writing about the fuckups and telling them. Which is currently almost impossible to do, because admitting failure can often result in an end to your career.

And all of this is exacerbated with consolidated, privatized healthcare where the shots are called not by outcome-oriented caregivers, but by profit-oriented MBAs.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#17

Post by LudwigNagasena »

"Must be allowed to” sounds like a weasel word. It is not illegal to make bad work. I doubt any contract an artist signs usually has a clause against producing bad work either. That phrase may sound sophisticated and provocative but it means nothing, at least to me.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#18

Post by mlok »

alentred wrote: post #5

I 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://n…

Maybe the proper word is "creative" and not "artistic" ? Both have an exploration/experimental side in common.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#19

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17

"Must be allowed to” sounds like a weasel word. It is not illegal to make bad work. I doubt any contract an artist signs usually has a clause against producing bad work either. That phrase may sound sophisticated and provocative but it means nothing, at least to me.

Depends on whether the artist "owns" themself. If I go to a Harry Styles concert and the guy is unable to perform on the stage, I should get a refund, the corporations behind Harry Styles failed to deliver a product. If I go to a Marc Rebillet [1] concert, well, I know exactly what I am getting even if Marc is barely able to yell 3 times in the microphone (and those screams would be exquisite anyhow).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytXwAvAdL4

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#20

Post by lucozade »

js8 wrote: post #10

That'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 meritocrat…

> The free market only cares about your present performance, not about your past.

That's blatantly not true in art, if it's true at all. If the art market agrees that some random sketch was by Da Vinci, it's not valued on merit.

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