I really liked this article, thanks Samin
Willingness to look stupid
201–210 of 273 posts
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#202This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…
I've never understood the "high-strust/low-trust" social dichotomy. I've never processed "society" as a single entity, but a large system with many independent aspects, and my levels of trust vary wildly across them and over time. I'd also offer that there's no difference between "truly creative work" and "truly creative and profitable work" but we often see the two as separate because we only have convenient access…
Have you not been to any so called low trust country? The difference is quite apparent in how people regard each other. With your alias, parts of Italy would qualify.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/01/where-mos...
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#203This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…
Graffiti on a bathroom stall is the purest form of art as it is not done for acclaim or monetary reward ... as the joke goes.
But actually I don't think pressure and tracking are inextricably linked. The culture of experimentation is what is important. You can have metrics that can guide you with the understanding that they should not be prescriptive.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#204This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…
Nicely put. That's why most of the innovation over the centuries came from the high trust style societies. With the decline of trust, I fear we as a civilization are going into a long period of stagnation or even regression. Unfortunately, at this point there's no socially acceptable way to reverse the trend of trust destruction.
I am not sure whether we can call Ancient Athens or Early Modern Italy "high trust". Both were pretty warlike, though - another source of innovations.
The fact that wars tend to result in extremely quick innovation cycles (both out of fear of losing and from usual bureaucracy being shoved away) is quite nasty ethically, but cannot be wished away.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia are high-trust societies, but they have done more drone development in four years than the entire world together in forty.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#205This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…
I've never understood the "high-strust/low-trust" social dichotomy. I've never processed "society" as a single entity, but a large system with many independent aspects, and my levels of trust vary wildly across them and over time. I'd also offer that there's no difference between "truly creative work" and "truly creative and profitable work" but we often see the two as separate because we only have convenient access…
That indicates that you live in a relatively high-trust society. Obviously there is a spectrum and aspects, but they tend to correlate.
I don't know of any real-world society that would be very high-trust in one regard (say, keeping their doors unlocked), but very low-trust in another (say, routinely poisoning their spices with lead to make them look more appealing - yes, this happens [0]).
[0] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/02/how-to-stop-tur...
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#206This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…
I agree with your main points, but as I have both a BFA and an MBA I want to point out that the MBA focused very much on creating high-trust work environnments. I think there must be a better label for the process that is destroying scientific and creative institutions.
Just an observation from a non-MBA. I feel that the MBA management class likes to create two class society where there is management class and a worker class. The management class has high trust amongst each other but no trust for the workers. The workers need to be controlled tightly and can’t be trusted. They are extremely reluctant to take feedback from the people who do the work. Better to pay consultants a lot of money. I have seen that in almost every larger company where I was employee or contractor.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did not base my comment on personal observations. It comes straight from psychology and the big 5. I was also once an art student myself. Creativity extends far beyond individual contributions, which becomes evident in resource and personnel management. Creativity is highly correlated to openness, as is intelligence, and is least restricted by those who are most eager to exercise decisions and try new things withou…
Openness is on the closed minded-openness axis. Neuroticism is on the neurotic-stable axis. These are independent things. You can be highly open-minded and highly neurotic. I’d seriously question your understanding of the Big 5.
> These are independent things.
I never claimed otherwise. You have invented your own strawman to attack.
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#208This posts observation have interesting side-effects. Measurements, metrics and surveillance kill creative work. And hierarchies and the fear of embarrassment do too. So, the more you try to force "excellence" into existence via external pressures and resource tracking, the more it disappears. Which leaves as observation, you can only do truly creative work - in a high trust society, where people trust you with the r…
Graffiti on a bathroom stall is the purest form of art as it is not done for acclaim or monetary reward ... as the joke goes. But actually I don't think pressure and tracking are inextricably linked. The culture of experimentation is what is important. You can have metrics that can guide you with the understanding that they should not be prescriptive.
If it's not done for acclaim then why is it usually someone's handle?
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#209Plot twist: anything original will look stupid, until some cultural event makes the original thing the new "way," then all the small minds will act like that was the only way the thing should have been done all along. "The emperor has no clothes" is a much deeper story about society and human nature than people realize.
What if the emperor had no clothes but he has a monster cock swanging left to right dickslapping the citizens as he walks by
They would be like Sir, Hey put that huge dick away you're scaring people
There would be a different lesson, is all I'm saying
Re: Willingness to look stupid
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isn’t really correct. Fear of observation is highly correlated with neuroticism. Creativity, on the other hand, is a component of openness which is highly correlated with intelligence. The most creative people are those who measure both high intelligence and low neuroticism, which simultaneously are the people least concerned by impacts of increased observation. Furthermore, high trust social environments only c…
This feels like it's conflating a couple of different things. Firstly, in the Big five model, which you seem to be referencing, openness and neuroticism are separate factors- Low neuroticism isn't correlated with high openness. Yes, since neuroticism is a negative trait, one would expect people low in neuroticism to do better than people who are high in neuroticism. This does not equate to "the most creative people"…
> Low neuroticism isn't correlated with high openness.
I never claimed this and I have no idea why you would think I did.
What I do know is that nearly 1 in 3 JavaScript developers, based upon large anonymous polls, self identify as autistic. If that is representative of software employment as a whole then software employment is full of self-indulgent and highly neurotic people at levels far exceeding the outside population. Everybody wants to think they are more awesome, creative, and highly intelligent compared to everybody else, but that is numerically irrational.
Low neurotic people are generally less scared of just about everything including third party observation. Less fear and less anxiety is the very definition of low neuroticism.