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Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

markusstrasser.org

61–70 of 125 posts

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#61
post #20

I liked the post but can someone explain how macro choices change the acceptance volume? Is it their effect on the total number of available choices? Does picking E minor somehow give you fewer options than C major (I'm not a musician)?

> Does picking E minor somehow give you fewer options than C major (I'm not a musician)?

Short answer: No. No matter what note you start on you have exactly the same set of options.

Long answer: No. All scales (in the system of temperament used in the vast majority of music) are symmetrical groups of transpositions of certain fundamental scales.[1] These work very much like a cyclic group if you have done algebra. In the example you chose, E minor is the "relative minor" of G Major, meaning that if you play an E Aeolean mode it contains all the same notes as G Major), and G major gives you the exact same options as C Major or any other Major Scale. What Messiaen noticed is that there are grouped sets of "Modes of limited transposition" which all work this way. So the major scale (and its “modes”, meaning the scales with the same key signature of sharps or flats but starting on each degree of the major scale) can be transposed exactly 11 times without repeating. There are 3 other scales that have this property (Normally these are called the harmonic minor, melodic minor and melodic major[2]). There are also modes of limited transposition with only 1 transposition (the chromatic scale), 2 (the whole-tone scale), 3 (the "diminished scale") and so on. Messiaen explains them all in that text if you're interested.

[1] This theory was first written out in full in Messiaen's "The technique of my musical language" but is usually taught as either "Late Romantic" or "Jazz" Harmony depending on where you study https://monoskop.org/images/5/50/Messiaen_Olivier_The_Techni...

[2] If you do "classical" harmony, your college may teach you the minor scales wrong with a descending version that is just a mode of the major scale. You may also not have been taught melodic major but it's awesome. (By “wrong” here, I mean specifically Messiaen and Schoenberg would say it’s wrong because a scale is a key signature/tonal area and so can’t have different notes when a melody ascending from descending. If there are two sets of different notes, Messiaen would say they are two scales and I would agree.)

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#62
The more mileage you get, the easier it is to see the mistakes in your old art (if you’re improving lol)

The more refined your technique is, the harder it will be to discern mistakes and aesthetic failures.

Eventually you might come to a point where you can’t improve because you literally don’t see any issues. That might be the high water mark of your ability.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#63

I discussed this premise with my LLM and we came to this following conclusion which I find quite elegant: > In any bounded system under feedback, refinement produces diminishing returns and narrowing tolerance, governed by a superlinear precision cost. > There isn’t one official name, but what you’ve articulated is essentially a unified formulation of the diminishing-returns / sensitivity-amplification law of creatio…

Agreed, that's an elegant conclusion. Thanks for sharing.

PS Usually LLM-generated content is strongly penalized here (and with good reason). But IMHO, when clearly noting it as such, and sharing something worthwhile -- as in this case -- an exception should be made.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#64
post #30

Judging 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…

This kind of article is why people read comments first today.

It's such a simple idea. And it already has a name, diminishing returns. I don't know what prompted this article but it wasn't insight.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#65
post #30

Judging 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…

I had to think way too hard about what the author was trying to say. It smacks of an attempt at precise language, yet the subject matter is not precise at all. The author commits a Paul Grahamism, assuming their personal experience is generalizable and uniform. Certainly, some artists work in the way they describe. Maybe even "most", who knows. But there are plenty of artists that do not. I've known plenty of artists…

In defense of Paul Graham, his essays are often unnecessarily long, but I don't remember he has written something as bad as this abstract.

It's more on par with something you'll find on lesswrong.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#66
post #22
post #4

Perhaps a controversial view on this particular forum but I find the tendency of a certain type of person* to write about everything in this overly-technical way regardless of whether it is appropriate to the subject matter to be very tiresome ("executing cached heuristics", "constrained the search space"). *I associate it with the asinine contemporary "rationalist" movement (LessWrong et al.) but I'm not making any…

What diction is "appropriate to the subject matter" is a negotiation between author and reader. I think the author is ok with it being inappropriate for many; it's clearly written for those who enjoy math or CS.

I enjoy maths and CS and I could barely understand a word of it. It seems to me rather to have been written to give the impression of being inappropriate for many, as a stand-in for actually expressing anything with any intellectual weight.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#67

Bands and artists do sometimes record a banger very quickly, and no, the effort is not in muscle memory or practice. If it was in muscle memory it would be repeatable feat, and it really isn't. Some work is technically polished and you can see/hear the effort that went into it. But there's a point where extra effort makes the work less good. Music starts to sound stale and overproduced, art loses some of its directne…

As my old art teacher used to say, "You work on something and it gets better and better and then it turns to shit."

This is a large part of the discussions in the first one or two interviews in Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester. Bacon talks about pushing to the limits of adding more to a work until it's good, and then if taken too far it ruins the work. And only very rarely can he pull it back around to good.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#68

Bands and artists do sometimes record a banger very quickly, and no, the effort is not in muscle memory or practice. If it was in muscle memory it would be repeatable feat, and it really isn't. Some work is technically polished and you can see/hear the effort that went into it. But there's a point where extra effort makes the work less good. Music starts to sound stale and overproduced, art loses some of its directne…

As my old art teacher used to say, "You work on something and it gets better and better and then it turns to shit."

Was your old teacher’s name Cory Doctorow?

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#69
post #14

Earlier 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

You're confusing art with technical skill. You like art that demonstrates technical skill, that's fine. But art doesn't have to demonstrate technical skill to be artistic - indeed defining what 'art' is exactly is surprisingly difficult.

Re: Why effort scales superlinearly with the perceived quality of creative work

#70
post #35
post #30

Judging 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.

It would be clearer with a comma after "increases". Without that it's a garden-path sentence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

You read "increases" as a transitive verb, and then reach the "collapses" at the end of the sentence and have to re-parse the whole thing when you realize it was really intransitive.

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