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Comment by tabs_masterrace | Hacker News Reader

> Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future.

This one is classified bullshit, although I think it makes at least somewhat sense.

Howso? I don't see how either health or tolerance is related to creativity… Also why only future creativity?

To be fair, it says "for the future", not "only for the future". If I say "these reforms will ensure a clean environment for the next generation", I'm not ruling out the possibility that they'll also do so for the current generation.

Because they imply a safer and longer life and the creativity of dead people are zero. I think it makes some sense.

There might be slightly positive causal correlations between health and creativity (probably not too strong though because there are lots of mentally deranged successful artists), and, more plausibly, between tolerance and creativity, but that's not enough profundity. It does not give you that "kick" of information gain you get from the profound sentences. It abuses a poetic/proverbial form to only state weak to non-existent causal associations and henceforth it is bullshit.

As someone who picked out the "two categories" of statements with 100% accuracy before looking at the answers...

I think he has a point.

Creativity could be proposed to be conditional on maintaining personal well-being (health) while undergoing exposure to many new experiences (tolerance).

Losing your health during exposure to new things makes you reactionary and conservative and want to cling to set ideas.

Have no tolerance and you won't even want to be exposed to new or uncomfortable experiences in the first place.

But if you can maintain your health, and tolerate exposure to new ideas, why the fruit that comes from both those while undergoing continued diverse experiences is presumably creativity (being in the future because you can only get it after said experiences).

Many very creative musicians lived very unhealthy lives. Most of them even grew old, some were not so lucky eg Cobain, Hendrix etc

Conterargument is that unhappy creative people exist and are not rare. So does bigoted closed minded creative people.

Unhealthy people can also be both creative and non-creative, both cling to one set of ideas or change their minds constantly. Pain makes you more nervous, frustrated, snappy etc, but you can still be creative.

Conversely, you can be tolerant and healthy, but still completely non-creative, whether it means generating new ideas or creating things. You can be tolerant, healthy and completely passive.

Jesus people, its an attempt at a valid interpretation. I'm not taking a position on the "truthiness" of any of those sentences :P

It's really hard to be creative if all your attention is pulled by your body failing, impending death, and the inadequacies of everyone and everything around you.

It's a lot easier to be a content consumer while in poor physical/mental health than to be a content creator.

For some folks, that's true. Others it simply gives a different vibe to their creativity because their mind is pulled to such things.

Right. Also:

> 2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

Describes reading the description of an artwork at a Modern Art gallery pretty well

Does it? Where is the "transformation" happening? In mind of the viewer?

Modern Art is bullshit.

That one clearly describes LISP.

Lisp has an abstract beauty in that it is a homoiconic language thought up as an intellectual exercise from a small number of basic rules and simple syntax.

The hidden meaning, which surprised even its creator at the time that he wrote "RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE", that a mathematical syntax should also be a fully implementable language to get a working interpreter, transforms the original paper into something even more beautiful and amazing than the original abstract beauty of the idea.

"The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty".

Edit: indeed, i think that one can apply to many instances of people who find programming languages and math aesthetically beautiful but also practical :P

> Lisp has an abstract beauty in that it is a homoiconic language thought up as an intellectual exercise from a small number of basic rules and simple syntax.

That's the idealistic view. Also LISP was developed over some years, based on earlier languages for list processing (IPL, ...) and similar.

The paper 'RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE' was a presentation to a specific (more scientific) audience, while there were earlier and at the same time already 'real' language manuals published, which were concerned with less 'abstract' topics.

See for example:

http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/MIT/LISP_P...

IMO it is only Art if you feel something immediately. If you have to read some description to get the meaning, it is only pretentious and not Art for me.

Just curious: Why does art need to make anyone feel anything?

Do you feel something if you see a landscape, portrait, or still life? Do you think they are still art? In a similar thread, if you stare at something abstract, if it draws you in to gaze on it because it is a cool design even if it brings forth no feeling, does it make it art or not?

Do you understand hidden meanings from 200 years ago that would have been obvious to viewers at the time? Do you still consider it art even if you have to read about the meanings built into the art?

(Art is full of pretentious bullshit, and I'm of the opinion that assigning meaning or requiring a meaning of art is, of itself, pretentious.)

I think art should make feel at least someone something in order to be considered as art.

That is not the same as having a meaning, though. For example, Mandelbrot set makes me feel "it is wonderful", but it doesn't need to have any meaning (technically, it is a solution to some equation, so it has meaning, but you don't have to know the meaning in order to feel that something).

The problem with art is that it could be a stated goal of the art form to minimise "feeling" and still be considered valid. In this case, if you feel something, the art form has failed.

Art is tricksome. It is what it is justified as being, but it's also just what it is.

I've found it easier over the years to just say that I like / dislike something, but my opinion isn't worth anything, and can happily be different to yours.

If you read about it before you see it, will that destroy all art? How will you know? What about our societal social context and the art that came before it, or the artists creative arc?

I guess I know it when I see it.

Abstract beauty can be beautiful without having a hidden meaning (or at least each one will see "the beauty they can see")

Show white noise to an Imagenet CNN and it will give you a score for something.

To describe it as a "beauty" means it is beautiful by definition. The point is that it undergoes a transformation in your head upon some deeper meaning being revealed.

I think the bullshit part is "for the future". "in the future" would make some sense.

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