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Comment by enginn | Hacker News Reader

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud”

― Émile Zola

A true artist is one who never calls him/herself an artist is my stance. It is usually when society sees a person's works and starts to give positive reviews that the inner artist is unleashed on the world. Sensitivity plays a part, but only insofar as the artist can channel art through the correct medium. If I'm electrosensitive (I constantly get electric shocks for example), then computers are probably the best medium. Someone with an ear for sound would likewise choose musical instruments to mirror back the sound of nature..

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I earned a 4 year degree in fine arts, have exhibited my work, and make a point to try to create at least one new work each week. I have never made it my career, but art is certainly one of my larger hobbies. By your definition, though, because I actively pursue it and call myself an artist, even though society has not noticed it or given me positive reviews... that means I am not a "true artist".

So I must disagree - one is an artist if you make art that is meaningful to yourself. I have known many artists over the years, and most of us just quietly do our own work for our own reasons. I will not go so far to accuse people who do it for society's reviews and recognition to not be artists - that would be dismissive of their own goals. But artists have varying reasons for doing their work, and trying to define a "true artist" is going to invalidate someone unfairly.

Taking what the parent comment said and what you've said, I can see both points.

In defense of the parent, anyone that practices a trade (singer, actor, artist, programmer, developer, engineer) typically doesn't identify themselves as one of the aforementioned titles unless they get paid to do so. Now, mind you, that doesn't mean in the most traditional sense that lack of monetary reward/success doesn't disqualify their skill but, in this world, it certainly validates ones work/interest.

To make my point, society typically doesn't label someone that can sing a 'singer' unless that is their profession and they get paid for it. Even though I script and do 'some' programming, I wouldn't dare call myself a programmer.

I believe that one shouldn't get too hung on titles. For me, at least, I find a sole definition limiting because there isn't a single title that describes everything that I'm good at, however, there is a single title that describes what I'm good enough to get paid for.

> If I'm electrosensitive (I constantly get electric shocks for example), then computers are probably the best medium.

This statement appears as mystical as tarot cards. What connection is there to getting electric shocks and using a computer other than some vague mystical correlation not founded on anything logical?

This reads like the wrong combination of shoes and floor, resulting in huge ESD problems. Highly individual, too.

Nope..Cork sandals will produce the same effect. It's not highly individual, it is highly reported many times by many people, but usually cast off as irrelevant or unimportant to people's daily life...

Dude, you really need to make sure your gear is grounded properly. You should not be getting electrical shocks from touching stuff. I can't begin to tell you how many times we've had screwball problems with equipment that had floating voltages due to poor earthing---problems that went away the minute we fixed the wiring. (The guys maintaining said equipment though nothing wrong of the fact that they were getting shocked and said nothing about it for months!)

I get shocks "all the time". It's when humidity is low and I build up a static charge, which happens in the winter because outside air hasn't got much water in it, then it gets heated to room temperature and has very low humidity. There's no mystery here. I bought my first wireless router simply because I was frying my wired routers; I'd systematically walk through all the ports, destroying them one by one, then I'd have to buy a new one. I realized it was cheaper to pay much more and go wireless than keep buying wired routers. I cringe when it happens now because I always know I'm frying something, I just don't know what. Fortunately, I've got a house humidifier now, which mitigates the problem.

Alternatively, as others say, you've got a grounding problem. But that's a different sort of shock.

Nature is self similar. I come from the school of thought that if something is prominent in my own nature, then it must resonate highly with something else just as prominent. Like attracts like and all of that.

Electrosensitivity as mystical? You could say that, but it genuinely is a case of intuition manually over-riding a brain with an otherwise high reliance on scientific surety.

I surveyed a related question once: "Do you have to make money to be an entrepreneur?"

Responses were quite bipolar, though startup people tended to say "no". My own background was in running a small business before working in startups and so it was something I always think about.

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