I had a cabinet built and the guy doing the work pointed out that the human eye is really great at detecting line-line deviation; but, building to & correcting for that deviation requires working across the whole surface. He was making an area-effort to linear-quality argument. He said every time you halved the gap, it quadrupled the effort. Also, he said that was what saw-dust & glue were for.
Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
41–50 of 125 posts
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#42I had a cabinet built and the guy doing the work pointed out that the human eye is really great at detecting line-line deviation; but, building to & correcting for that deviation requires working across the whole surface. He was making an area-effort to linear-quality argument. He said every time you halved the gap, it quadrupled the effort. Also, he said that was what saw-dust & glue were for.
One thing I’ve learned over decades of home/DIY projects is it’s usually better to intentionally target a small overlap/reveal rather than trying to have two materials match perfectly.
If you have a piece of door trim that exactly matches the piece behind, any imperfections or subsequent wood movement will be unsightly. If you instead target a 1/4” reveal, imperfections and slight wood movement are wildly less noticeable.
This is “build so the 1/32” imperfection/movement doesn’t matter at all” rather than trying to halve or quarter it. (If you can make something monolithic after attaching, such as a plaster wall, you don't have to do this, but wood furniture and trim often has these intentional offsets.)
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
no, we need more of this, the opposite of this is Robin Williams destroying the poetry theory book in dead poeta society, the result was weak kids and one of them commited suicide. More technical stuff in relation to art is a good thing, but its expected that anglosaxon people have allergy to this, they think is somehow socialist or something and they need art to be unfefined etc
Respectfully, I have no idea what you're talking about. Dead Poets Society is a story and the message of the story isn't that Robin Williams' character is bad. Are you saying my perspective is anti-socialist? What is "refined" art?
of course in the movie they sell the idea that art is not subject to scientific or technical analysis, but if you do an indepent analysis you realize those kids didnt become stronger or freer. Art like the article explained is related to effort and technique. but people in the US LOVE stuff like Jackson pollock, they need for art to not being a thing you put effort and mind into
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#44Judging by the comments here, I'm the only one, but I have no idea what he's talking about. Even the abstract: > The act of creation is fractal exploration–exploitation under optimal feedback control. When resolution increases the portion of parameter space that doesn't make the artifact worse (acceptance volume) collapses. Verification latency and rate–distortion combine into a precision tax that scales superlinearl…
The abstract is some of the worst writing I've read in a while. Trying to sound so very smart while being incapable of getting your point across. This whole article reeks of pretentiousness.
Yeah, to date I think the smartest writing/speaking I've seen was Feynman. The way he could explain complicated physics concepts in simple words is just unmatched.
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#45Judging by the comments here, I'm the only one, but I have no idea what he's talking about. Even the abstract: > The act of creation is fractal exploration–exploitation under optimal feedback control. When resolution increases the portion of parameter space that doesn't make the artifact worse (acceptance volume) collapses. Verification latency and rate–distortion combine into a precision tax that scales superlinearl…
Hate to comment on the medium or writing style instead of the content but you're not alone. I understand the terms in the article in isolation or used in other fields, but it seems like the author is using a lot of technical metaphors. Or maybe I'm not their sophisticated audience.
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respectfully, I have no idea what you're talking about. Dead Poets Society is a story and the message of the story isn't that Robin Williams' character is bad. Are you saying my perspective is anti-socialist? What is "refined" art?
of course in the movie they sell the idea that art is not subject to scientific or technical analysis, but if you do an indepent analysis you realize those kids didnt become stronger or freer. Art like the article explained is related to effort and technique. but people in the US LOVE stuff like Jackson pollock, they need for art to not being a thing you put effort and mind into
Can you give an example of an artwork you think is acceptable?
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#47How often is a drawing really trashed and restarted? There's the saying, "Plan to throw one away," but seems like it varies in practice (for software). There are even books about patching paintings, like Master Disaster: Five Ways to Rescue Desparate Watercolors. In architecture, it's understood the people, vehicles, and landscape are not as exact as the building or structure, and books encourage reusing magazine cli…
From my very limited experience with art, it's more often the case that a work in progress creation is abandoned and then taken a stab at anew later than trashed and restarted. Or it is iterated on to a degree that it is not meaningfully different from a full restart. I have a bit more experience with software and the only reason for why we don't plan throw one away is because it costs more money and the market press…
While I'm always ready to throw away code when I realize that there is a better way to do things I found it quite difficult to write code with the intent to throw it away. However I often do write code with intent of modifying it once I have a better idea of what is needed. It might be because I'm comparatively better at refactoring than at starting from scratch.
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't jump to call it a trick, but I agree, the author sacrificed too much clarity in a try for efficiency. The author set up an interesting analogy but failed to explore where it breaks down or how all the relationships work in the model. My inference about the author's meaning was such: In a sharp peak, searching for useful moves is harder because you have fewer acceptable options as you approach the peak.
Fewer absolute or relative? If you scale down your search space... This only makes some kind of sense if your step size is fixed. While I agree with another poster that a reduction of a creative process to gradient descent is not wise, the article also misses the point what makes such a gradient descent hard -- it's not sharp peaks, it's the flat area around them -- and the presence of local minima.
I see your point. I'd meant relatively fewer progressive options compared to an absolute and unchanging number of total options.
But that's not what the author's analogy would imply.
Still, I think you're saying the author is deducing the creative process as a kind of gradient descent, whereas my reading was the author was trying to abductively explore an analogy.
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#49How often is a drawing really trashed and restarted? There's the saying, "Plan to throw one away," but seems like it varies in practice (for software). There are even books about patching paintings, like Master Disaster: Five Ways to Rescue Desparate Watercolors. In architecture, it's understood the people, vehicles, and landscape are not as exact as the building or structure, and books encourage reusing magazine cli…
When programming stuff as a hobby, I do always plan to throw one away.
The first one is where I learn my lessons and write enough spaghetti until I fully understand the problem.
Then I delete the first one, and start over with the lessons learnt.
Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The abstract is some of the worst writing I've read in a while. Trying to sound so very smart while being incapable of getting your point across. This whole article reeks of pretentiousness.
Yeah, to date I think the smartest writing/speaking I've seen was Feynman. The way he could explain complicated physics concepts in simple words is just unmatched.
Feynman's Physics lectures are proof of that: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
10/10 should be required reading for all humans