It’s absolutely possible to be that good. Especially in the middle ages / early renaissance with the work you did for guilds and working for masters as an apprentice.
At eleven years old: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-3939.php
At fourteen at his sisters wedding: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-9.php
http://art-klimt.com/early_works.html
Some people are just prodigies - very, very few, but it's a real phenomenon. Even with early craft training, which people don't get today, exceptional talent still cuts through.
This is why the common "There's no such thing as talent, it's just hard work" line can't possibly be true. It's soothing to believe that you too could be a genius if only you put the hours in, but it just doesn't work like that.
Ability is set by a talent ceiling, which is on a bell curve. "Most people don't reach their ceiling" and "There are extreme outliers of native ability" can both be true at the same time.
- Some use extreme outliers to justify their own failure to get close to their ceiling. "I can't be Einstein, why should I try?"
- Some (parents, coaches, motivational speakers) also use extreme outliers to claim there are no limits/ceilings for others. "If you can dream it you can do it!" (but somehow it doesn't seem to apply to them)
please stop killing my delusions.
Gave me the greatest impulse to explore my creative drive like nothing else before, after spending my 20s lost in a daze. I know you’re joking, but if you aren’t, do not lose hope yet.
Christ a-fucking mighty, in some states, the law says that Michelangelo, had he been alive today,would have had to sit on a booster seat at the age at which he made this painting. Absurd.
One of my more heretical beliefs is that tech companies should do more hiring of high brilliant people right out of high school.
Or perhaps we need more challenging schools. I'd hate to harvest before cultivation has a chance to grow without the constraints of organizational biases
- Marquis de Lafayette was only 19 when he helped the US win independence.
- Alexander began conquering when he was 20, smashed Persia at 25, and "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer" at 30.
- Pascal and Galois did revolutionary math before 20.
- Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein at 18!
We need more rigorous secondary education and a pathway that lets people with rocket-ship trajectories skip useless tertiary education. I am sick and tired coddling mediocre people by pretending geniuses don't exist. If I ran things, I'd set up magnet schools nation-wide.
People can and do create rigorous private schools, but they're not accessible to the masses and often embody the same anti-talent mentality public ones do.
On the other hand: a disagreement about the actual definition of gifted, based on the existence of thousands of such schools in the US alone. "Gifted" in some jurisdictions simply means something anodyne like "top 10%" which obviously doesn't get close to creating an actually targeted school environment for your Mozarts.
I think that we do NOT want to promote this. We need less of that, not more in fact. In fact, we need to keep people like that far away from power.
I have more. Most average people need less education. No point in putting them through 15+ years of 'education'. They can start working at least part time by the time they are 12 or so. This way they also grow up psychologically very soon.
> Michelangelo's biographers—Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) and Ascanio Condivi (1525–1574)—tell us that, aside from some drawings, his first work was a painted copy after a well-known engraving by Martin Schongauer (1448–1491) showing Saint Anthony tormented by demons. Made about 1487–88 under the guidance of his friend and fellow pupil Francesco Granacci, Michelangelo's painting was much admired; it was even said to have incited Ghirlandaio's envy. [https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2009/michelan...]
So with AI we can expect such artistic development to effectively cease, or to be almost always channeled through the averageness-finding-machines.
Sure, but not if this is your first painting. Humans can't one-shot art like this
As a comparison, Mozart's compositions when he was 15 years old was unbelievable, unless you put in context he was already composing music at 5 years old
> At eleven years old: https://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/work-3939.php
This one is a copy (Bargue plate − a famous set of plates designed to train students efficiently). And to be fair, it's not _that_ great of a copy.
The paintings really aren't impressive either: compare them to student works from e.g. the Angel Academy[0] (yes, they are older than 15). Incidentally, they also use Bargue plates a little to train students, and are far, far more demanding with themselves than Picasso in terms of accuracy and cleanliness.
Picasso wasn't terrible − he's definitely better than a non-painter − but he's genuinely far from having ever reached the level of his peers.
It's like comparing a food truck with historical French cooks.
[0]: https://www.artrenewal.org/14thARCSalon/Category/DaVinciInit...